


Ten of Swords

by WolffyLuna



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: 'Canon Compliant' as a warning tag, Conflicted Loyalties, Cousin Incest, Disease, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Gift Giving, Infidelity, Loyalty, Númenor, Religion, Religious Worldbuilding, Romance, Spies & Secret Agents, Torture, Tragedy, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:53:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 46,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23103526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolffyLuna/pseuds/WolffyLuna
Summary: Ten of Swords: a painful yet inevitable ending.Ar-Pharazon has fears about the loyalty of his new wife, Tar-Miriel, and asks a soldier, Zimrazagar, to spy on her, in the guise of guarding her.Zimrazagar intends to stay as a mere bodyguard, with a sideline in spying, but even with the best of intentions, she does not succeed....and it all ends in drowning and death.
Relationships: Ar-Pharazon/Tar-Miriel, Tar-Míriel/Original Female Character(s), Tar-Míriel/Original King's Man Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	1. Dramatis Personae

**Zimrazagar:** (Adunaic, "Jewel Sword") Bodyguard to Tar-Miriel.  
_Alternate names:_ Azraindil (Adunaic, "Sea Flower")  
Amruniel (Sindarin, "East Daughter")  
Yelcamire (Quenya, "Jewel Sword")

 **Tar-Miriel** : (Quenya, "Queen Jewel Daughter") Queen of Númenor.  
_Alternate names:_ Ar-Zimraphel (Adunaic, "Queen Jewel Daughter")

 **Ar-Pharazon** : (Adunaic, "King Golden") King of Númenor

 **Niluben** : (Adunaic, "Moon Servant") Faithful Astronomer  
_Alternate names:_ Isilnuro (Quenya, "Moon Servant")

 **Todaphel** : (Adunaic, "Guard Daughter") Secretary to Ar-Pharazon

 **Sauron** : (Quenya, "Foul Smelling") Former Servant of Melkor  
_Alternate Names:_ Tar-Mairon (Quenya, "King Excellent")

 **Amandil** : (Quenya, "Lover of Aman") Faithful Lord of Andunie

 **Elendil** : (Quenya, "Elf Friend") Son of Amandil

 **Isildur** : Grandson of Amandil

 **Birchie** : Zimrazagar's horse

 **Rocharan** : (Sindarin, "Red Horse") Miriel's horse, formerly Tar-Palantir's.

 **Abrazan** : (Adunaic, Steadfast) Faithful, owns a kiln.


	2. Knight of Swords/Strength Reversed

The docks of Romenna were full of noise and activity and the sort of controlled chaos that marked all centres of industry. Workers shouted as cargo moved on and off the ship. Sails and ship wood creaked and groaned and occasionally thunked against the docks. Men and women rushed about, carrying bags and boxes and papers, pulling crates on sleds, loading cranes, and leading the crane-hoisting mules about. The scent of the salty sea air was covered by smells of sweat and tar and spices and sulphurous scent of arsenopyrite.

…Though maybe that last one was just because Zimrazagar stood next to a ship unloading it.

She stood guard over the trading ship _Fair Winds_. It belonged to The East Coast Gold and Silver Company. The cargo was from the mine at White Sparkle hot springs, where they stripped out the quartz cinter for the gold nuggets and the arsenopyrite to smelt into gold. (And iron. And arsenic. Such was the life of a mining and goldsmithing company on the go.)

Anyone who dealt in gold would need guards. Someone to make sure the locals on the docks didn’t try and steal a nugget or two. Or more likely the workers, to be honest. They wanted a guard who could be trusted, some veteran with a good record (if one that missed all the important details when forced onto the limited medium of paper.) A veteran who was stuck on this side of the sea, because she marched under Pharazon’s banner, and even if her company stayed on three years after he returned home, she was now stuck over here and in need of work.

That was Zimrazagar.

She crossed her arms, as she watched a crane full of quartz cinter swing in front of her. She crinkled her nose. _I wonder if anyone’s noticed that that’s just got pyrite in it,_ she thought, _and no gold._

It could be worse. She could not have work. And helping protect the wealth flowing into Númenor was worthy work, and not much different than protecting it across the Eastern sea.

…She wished she could believe that. Watching gold to make sure none went missing wasn’t the same. She wasn’t protecting people. Not her squadmates, not her company, not the people of Númenor or middle earth. She was watching gold. Stars, she was watching quartz and pyrite more than she was watching gold, and you could barely call that wealth!

A foreman shouted across to her. “Hey, Azraindil!”

“Yes?” The other unpleasantness of being on this side of the sea was her name. In Middle Earth, among the soldiers, she was Zimrazagar, _Jewel-Sword_. It was the name she answered to there. But here in Romenna, a _nomme de guerre_ was a mere nickname, not something meaningful or important. It was something your friend might call you, maybe, but certainly not your employer. To them, she was _Sea-flower_ , Azraindil.

It wasn’t a bad name, as such. It just fit her badly. It was her childhood name, and it fit about as well as her childhood clothes.

“There’s someone here to see you!”

 _Someone important enough to stop my work?_ Her nose crinkled more, and she stepped off the gangplank. It had to be pretty serious to get the foreman to ask her to move. Why, in the two minutes she was gone, someone could magically steal all the gold!

She walked forwards, and the implications ran through her. Ice gripped her gut. Had someone died? Her foreman was business minded, but not cruel. If someone had come running from the Eastern hills to tell her that her mother or father died, he’d let them straight to her. (It wasn’t their time yet—but it would never be their time. They were all still in the grip of death, no matter how much they struggled.)

She reached where her foreman stood, next to someone else.

…A royal messenger. Wearing the tabard with the eagle quill screen printed in black over yellow cloth, and holding two horses’ reins, each one glossy coated and long legged, with the eagle feather brand on their left shoulders.

Either her parents had moved up in the world, and their death was a state occasion, or something else was going on.

“Are you Zimrazagar?”

Her shoulders loosened. “Yes, sir.”. The use of her war name shouldn’t have relaxed her. This could be orders to muster, or to be present at a court martial—but her parents were less likely to be dead. And it felt like taking off the two tight childhood shirt, and having someone handing you something that fit.

(And there was a stupid thrum of excitement at the idea of a muster, of their new king Ar-Pharazon reaching his hand and his banner across the waters again, of actually getting to do something that would help people more than just watching cranes—)

The messenger handed her a folded piece of paper, sealed with wax seal with the seal of a sceptre with a circle through it—the seal of princes and heirs. The seal of, until his coronation, Ar-Pharazon.

He’d sent her a letter? Personally? That was… intriguing. Possibly exciting. They’d met once, and she’d served with distinction, but he was her general. She could never have expected him to remember her personally, especially not after twelve years.

She opened the letter.

_Dear Zimrazagar Azraindil,_

_I humbly request your presence at the Palace, as soon as it is possible for your to arrive._

And then, in distinctly different handwriting, the looping signature of _General Pharazon, son of Gimilkhad._

It was vague, strangely so.

But it requested her presence at the palace. It requested her presence under her _war name_. She couldn’t have said no, not to an order by the soon-to-be-king, not matter how politely phrased—but she didn’t want to say no. She was being asked by the King, under her war name, and she would accept with enthusiasm.

“I will of course come with you,” she said to the messenger.

The messenger nodded.

She turned to her foreman. “As much as I regret being derelict in my duties, sir, the king requests my presence.”

The foreman waved a hand in an annoyed fashion. “If the king—or the king to be or— _whatever,_ wants you, I guess I rate less than him, so I can’t stop ya.”

And well, he did rate less than the king, or soon to be king, _so_.

The messenger held out the reins of one of the horses, a glossy blood bay with sleepy eyes. Evidently the king wanted her with enough haste to ask her to ride.

Unfortunately, she was going to have to make the logistics complicated. Because of course that would be the first impression she made. She held up a hand. “I appreciate that, I do. I just have to go to the local stables and pick up my own horse.”

* * *

When someone said there was a body to burn, all the Faithful came. No one asked for clarification, or explanation, or made their excuses. Everyone knew, and everyone came.

All of Faithful of Armenolos gathered at the Abrazan’s kiln at midnight.

Miriel appreciated that. Appreciated that it would be done for anybody. That it wasn’t because she or her father were special. And equally, that she or her father were not so special that it could not be done.

The Faithful did not burn their dead. Not in the past, anyway. The dead were placed, respectfully, into catacombs. Maybe brought out, occasionally, to make a point. But not harmed by human hands.

But now—immortality and resurrection were not possible, not even near possible, but people were trying harder, and—

Some were worried that if one was brought back, they would be taken from Eru’s side. Those asked whichever family member, or Faithful friend they could find, to come and burn their body.

Her father, Tar-Palantir, had not worried about that. He did not believe resurrection possible, and thus had no fear of it. Why go to the effort of preventing something that could not happen? Or worse, legitimise the impossible by showing fear of it?

But Miriel—she was always more pessimistic than her father. So, she worried that her father could be brought back.

(She worried , also, that he would not be at Eru’s side.)

She worried that her father could be brought back, back into a world were death lay slain—He did not deserve that. Tar Palantir had not done anything worthy of that _punishment_. That waking up in a world were everything had been broken and twisted from what it should be.

So he would burn.

The embalmed body rested on a pallet of clay, like he was asleep, if one was to be utterly still while they slumbered.

The Faithful carefully refused to acknowledge that it was their king laying there.

She held her father’s hand, stiff and waxy with rigor mortis and embalming fluid. She looked at his face, trying to memorise it, even if portraits of him littered the palace. (What if her husband to be hid them, or burned them, or--?)

Isilnuro and Amandil stood next to her, trying to be comforting, but coming across as too warm and suffocating.

“It’s a hard choice, I know—” Isilnuro, known as Niluben outside of this little circle of Faithful, rested a hand on her shoulder. “—But you are making a good one.”

“Don’t people usually say ‘the best one?’” Miriel replied.

He shook his head. “No one can know what best choice is. You’re making a reasonable one. That’s enough.”

Amandil nodded, and grunted his agreement.

And okay, that was actually comforting. She stepped back, and grabbed onto one of the poles under the stretcher her father laid on. “I’m ready,” she said. She wasn’t, but she never was going to be, and they had to burn him some time tonight

They lifted the stretcher, carefully carried him into the kiln, and closed the door.

Miriel sat down on the pallet of clay. Her felt heavier than they should be, felt weak and shaky with grief.

Her father had died a few days ago. In a few days time, almost exactly as many had passed since he died, she would be married. She would be queen, non-regnant.

Her father had fought and strived all his life to return Númenor to what it was, to halt its decay, to bring bake it’s dawn-tide. He had taught and instructed and exhorted her to do the same.

She couldn’t.

He hadn’t succeeded. Númenor had slid and crumbled and so few had noticed, and everyone had turned her backs on him, and it was for nothing—and she couldn’t fix. Couldn’t try. Not when she saw the chance of failure, and what that effort would cost.

Abrazan, the owner of the kiln, pulled Amandil aside. He meant to speak quietly, for his whisper to be buried in the roar of the fire, but it didn’t work. “We can’t keep doing this. My wife is going to notice.”

“She does not know you are faithful?” Amandil asked.

“She does, and she accepts it, as much as she can—but it’s one thing to think you should die, and rather another to burn people.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Amandil said.

Her father’s work had been less for nothing. He’d fought and strove for her to be a good queen—and she wasn’t going to be. She wasn’t going to even touch the sceptre for more than what she needed to hand it off. She wasn’t going to try and save Númenor.

She wept again.

They gathered around her, trying to be a circle of warmth and comfort, but she just felt like she was trapped in a judgmental cage of flesh.

* * *

Zimrazagar arrived at the palace the next day. She quickly changed clothes, into something clean and not covered in sweat and road dust, before a messenger shuffled her into an office. 

Pharazon—no, _Ar_ -Pharazon, for that would be his name soon enough—sat at the desk, looking calm in and in control. He wore navy blue robes with red embroidery around the collar and cuffs. The cloth was fine, and well sewn, but not extravagavant. They were the clothes of a general—a rich general, to be sure—but not the clothes of royalty. Not uet.

He looked up at her and smiled a politician’s smile, but it was warmer, and more true seeming than most politician’s smiles. “Ah, Zimrazagar. It’s good to see you.” He shook her hand, and gestured for her to take a seat. “I remember you from the flight from Knotty Hill, you and your squad held the rear guard quite admirably, as I recall.”

She sat down.

He had probably looked that up, pieced it together from reading a service record and asking majors, not from actual memory, but the possibility of it being memory was a little overwhelming. Her hard work being recognised, and remembered, by no less than the new king and one of the finest generals of the past three centuries, was more than she could quite imagine. “That is very kind of you to say, sir.”

He shuffled papers in front of him. “I don’t do kind—not without good reason, of course. You served admirably, and that deserves to be acknowledged. And I did not call you here arbitrarily. I have a job—no, a _mission_ —for you.”

“What is it, sir?” _Do you call kings-to-be sir? Or are they my lord, or something of that likeness?_ She felt almost naked in her ignorance, but she hadn’t been corrected and had very little idea of what to do.

He looked up from his papers, and looked straight at her, like he was trying to read her eyes. “Who are you loyal to?”

Zimrazagar blinked in confusion, and tried to cover it. Why ask after mentioning a mission? Maybe he felt that he already knew the answer, or that she might not tell the truth if she didn’t know the stakes, or _something_. (She hoped it was the first. That she was known for loyalty as well as competence and bravery. Competence could be taught, bravery could be coerced, but loyalty was a true virtue.) “To Númenor, sir. And to her rightful rulers and government.”

He leaned back in his chair, and threaded his fingers. “And who do you think is the rightful ruler?”

“In three days’ time, when you are married, you, sir.” Which was certainly true. And while, at this very moment, he may not be _rightful_ yet, he was certainly the _right_ ruler. Tar Palantir was a fool, with his eyes more on the Heavens than on his own people and land. There was no reason to believe that his daughter was any better. As more and more died, faster and faster, like cicadas at the end of summer, they needed a ruler who would notice, who would do something. Not some layabout who would say that all was going as it was meant to be.

Ar-Pharazon was a competent general, who cared about his soldiers, who did not throw away lives for anything less than saving twice as many. He would make a good king.

He nodded and relaxed. “My marriage is actually why I called you here. My wife to be—there have been some ructions in the court. There has been unrest outside it. She may be in danger.”

She didn’t raise an eyebrow, because that would be rude, but she wanted to. It took effort, but she managed to keep her face only looking mildly confused. “You wish me to guard her, sir?”

“Yes, and—this does not leave this room, you understand?— _she_ may be a danger. I do wish me and my wife started with a solid bedrock of trust, but we do not have that yet. I need to know what she is doing. I need to know whether what she is doing is in the interests of Númenor and it’s good governance.”

She lost her fight with her eyebrows, and frowned. “I’m willing to do whatever you ask—but I’m a soldier. I’m no spy.”

“Which is why I ask you. Miriel—” he paused, and corrected himself “— _Ar-Zimraphel_ has been in court some time. She knows who works for whom, who is loyal to whom. I need someone I know is loyal, but someone who is not known to her. I need someone with light touch. I need someone who has good reason to be chosen as a guard for my future wife. A career non-commissioned officer, with a distinguished service record, and good family? That is a good choice. And it was always reported that you kept your squad’s morale admirably high, which does imply some tact.”

 _Speeches where every second word is profanity is probably neither tact nor no what a spy does._ “If you think I am the best choice, I am willing to do whatever you ask.”

“Thank you. It is much appreciated, Zimrazagar.” He clapped her on the shoulder, and the shock of being touched by the King nearly knocked her out of her chair.

He handed her a piece of paper, with a hand drawn map. “There are directions on here. Go and meet your charge.”

* * *

Miriel sat on a couch in her rooms, a book of quenya poetry sitting heavy in her hands. The book was old, the leather well worn with stitching starting to fray and the pages going thin at the corners, but it was as well cared for as it was well loved, with new binding holding the pages together

She should be doing something productive. Should be bustling about court, charming and grasping at what scraps of power would be left to her after her marriage. She should be—celebrating, or something. People celebrated in the days leading up to their wedding, right?

…She couldn’t. She was too tired. Not just from the grief, not just from having to stay up all night to steal and burn a body, but also tired from the weight of all the work ahead of her. Even if she tried her best to avoid it, she had duties as a queen. She could not just be the grieving daughter. She would have to take up at least some of the mantle of her father. And the thought of that, and all it would be, was exhausting in and of itself.

So she rested. She sat with her legs tucked up under her, reading old banned Quenya poetry, reading words that had been read to her so many times that she still heard it in her father’s voice.

(She could almost feel his warmth under her as she sat on his knee, as he read in his calm slow voice about heroic men and self-sacrificing elves and beautiful half elves and stones that shone like stars.)

Someone knocked at her door.

She nearly jumped out of her chair at the shock.

While hiding the book under the couch, she called out, “Come in.”

The door opened. Standing in the entry way was a tall, regal looking woman, curly hair pulled back into a ponytail, dark skinned, and with the sort of face that deserved to be carved out of marble or granite. She wore a tabard in the colours of one of the gold mining companies. She bowed, formally, in the manner the military was taught to bow on parade. She didn’t enter the room. “Greetings, I am Zimrazagar Azraindil, and I am here to guard you.”

Miriel frowned. “Why would I need a guard?”

Zimrazagar paused for a second. “There have been—rumblings. Discontent. We want you to be safe, my lady. We may be being too careful, but it is better than taking unnecessary risks with your safety.” She shifted her weight to her other foot.

Was she nervous? And if she was, was it because she was in the presence of royalty, or could she be lying? Or was that thought just paranoia, greater than the paranoia that caused her to be sent a guard? She kept her voice flat and even. “Who is we?”

“Me. Your fiancé. The Captain of the Palace Guard, presumably.”

So, sent by Pharazon. For what reasons, Miriel wondered. Peace offering, or a spy? Pharazon was the major cause of ‘rumblings’ at court. She did not recognise Zimrazagar as a prominent King’s Man, but if she was a spy, she could have been chosen due to being unprominent, or maybe she really was a peace offering, a token of safety… No matter. She had a bodyguard now, and regardless of Pharazon’s motives, she couldn’t very well send her back. “You really can come in, you know. Please, take a seat.” She gestured to the couch opposite her.

Zimrazagar sat down gingerly, scanning the room.

And if she was a spy—well, two could play that game _._ “Tell me about yourself.”

She frowned, slightly confused. “What do you wish to know, my lady.”

 _This may end up being like pulling teeth_. “Why do you think you got picked to be my guard?”

Her body language did something odd, and hard to describe. It was like she became both more and less tense, or like the tension moved to different places in her body. It changed from the tension of not quite knowing what to do in a social situation, to the tension of not knowing what was appropriate to reveal, if Miriel had to guess. “I served with him on his later campaigns. I’d like to think I got a reputation for stubborn competence.” She smiled lopsidedly. “I imagine he needed someone he could trust with the responsibility of guarding you, but who didn’t already have greater responsibilities.”

“Greater responsibilities?”

“It would be a waste to send a general to guard you. Not because your safety is unimportant, never that- but because generals have valuable skills that could be best used to other purposes. Guarding? That’s a soldier’s job. I’d like to think I am a good soldier, at least good enough for such a high honour.”

“I see.” Miriel had gotten information, maybe even useful information, but not much rapport. If they were to be in close quarters, and if she was to get more information, more knowledge of Pharazon’s and Zimrazagar’s motives, she would need rapport. “Zimrazagar—that is what you would prefer to be called, yes?”

“I am happy with whatever you wish to call me, my lady.”

She looked upwards and clicked her tongue, making a show of thinking. “Jewel-sword—that sounds like a war name. Is it?”

“Yes, my lady. I got it as a recruit. My sword work was—flashy, back then. All sparkle and no substance. Got it drilled right out of me, but not before the name stuck.” She rubbed the back of her head, in mock embarrassment. This was a story she was telling, and one that would make her look good, but she needed to sell her past self’s foolishness at first. Make sure the protatogonist was relatable. “It was an insult then, if an affectionate one, until the Battle of Knotty Hill. When I saved my major from having his head chopped in half—I wasn’t a sword of fluorite any more, all sparkle and all crack. I was diamond. Hard, clear, sharp.” She smiled, and showed her eye teeth. “The name stuck even harder after that.”

Miriel laughed politely, hiding her mouth behind her hand. “You sound much more like a Jewel-sword than a Sea-flower.”

Zimrazagar became calm and formal in an instant. “You may call me whatever you wish.”

“Friend, we are going to be in incredibly close quarters, and I want us to be as comfortable with each other as possible. Thus, I want to use the name you honestly would prefer me to call you.”

She paused, not saying anything, looking like she was doing a complicated social calculus head, and really wishing she had a piece of paper to do it with. “Zimrazagar, then.”

She nodded. “Zimrazagar it is.”

Zimrazagar relaxed even more.

* * *

Zimrazagar turned the couch she sat on, so both the door and windows were in the corner of her vision. (She did fully intend to guard Ar-Zimraphel as much as she spied on her. She may be in actual danger, for a start. And if Ar-Zimraphel turned out to not need spying on, then she could still succeed at guarding her.

Guarding left less of a sour taste in her mouth than spying.)

She still kept half an eye on Ar-Zimraphel, as she worked on embroidering the hem of one of her dresses. It was black, with red seam stitching, and she embroidered red and white poppies and peonies and pomegranate flowers along the hem in neat satin stitch blocks.

Zimrazagar frowned at it. “Surely you could have someone else do that for you, if you wished?”

Ar-Zimraphel smiled softly, but did not take her eyes off her work. “True. But this keeps my hands busy. And this way, I can have exactly the design I picture.”

“You picture things very beautifully, my lady.” It was a true statement. Zimrazagar did not have the artistic eye for these sorts of the things, but the reds and pinks were bold and well chosen, and the stitchwork well designed.

Ar-Zimraphel smiled wider, and flushed. “You are far too kind.” She was—cute, adorable, when she blushed. It seemed strange to be looking at a new queen that way, but it was fact, and maybe it was less strange to look at a princess so. Her dark eyes were focused on her work, a lock of neatly pinned hair falling in her face. Her skin was dark and still smooth, despite being older than Zimragar by several decades. (But not spending a chunk of your life running around in the daylight would do that.) Each trait on it’s own was not adorable, but together they created a whole that made Zimrazagar want to squish her cheeks.

(…it was definitely strange to want to squish your monarch’s cheeks.)

Her embroidery was not obviously seditious, and if it was some Faithful code, then Zimrazagar could not recognise it. She feared her first report may end up being “Your wife really likes pomegranate flowers. Yes, I’d love to tell you more sir, but I honestly can’t.” 

But no news was probably good news in the spying business. Or maybe it meant your opponent was too subtle and sneaky for you… This was why you hired actual spies to do your spying, and not random veterans who’d spent the past ten years staring at quartz cinter and gold nuggets. They had no eye for these sorts of things. _Ugh._

Ar-Zimraphel looked up with a frown. “Is something the matter?”

Ach, and it showed on her face. Another reason to hire an actual spy! Zimrazagar rubbed her face. “I’m just—tired. It was a long ride here from Romenna. Do not let it trouble you.”

“If you need to rest, rest.”

“It is my duty to guard you.”

“You cannot guard me all hours of the day.”

“I fully intend to, my lady.”

Ar-Zimraphel’s frown deepened.

* * *

The coronation was held on the steps of the palace, with Ar-Zimraphel and Ar-Pharazon at the top landing.

Miriel glanced down at the crowd. It was a calm and sedate one, but it still moved and seethed like turned meat. The stairs were not that high, nor that steep, but it looked to her eyes almost a sheer drop down.

She turned away quickly.

Zimrazagar stood off to the side, one step down, acting as security detail, bright and shiny in new palace guard armour.

She does not know why she was watching Zimrazagar. Maybe she was a recognisable face, someone who’s face she could put onto the indistinct crowd. Maybe it was the comfort of knowing she was not going to be stabbed today. (Unless her fiancé put Zimrazagar herself up to it, she guessed.)

The ceremony was a blur. She had practiced the words so many times in the past few days, they flew out of her mouth without her conscious knowledge, just a tumble of word and sound and ritual. _I swear to honour the country, by word and deed-_

The officiant handed her the sceptre. She thanked them, with the formal words of acceptance, words so old they were more Taliska than Adunaic.

The sceptre sat cold and heavy in her hand. They had polished off the tarnish and finger prints and skin grease that her father had left when he wielded it, but she still could feel phantom prickles where his hands once held it. The silver made it heavy and solid. It

felt less like a symbol of office, and more like a weapon, like a mace she could use to crush her enemies.

She turned to Pharazon, soon to be king and soon to be husband.

She walked over, with careful steps, careful so she did not drop the sceptre.

The crowd quietened—or was that just a trick of perception.

For these short few seconds, these short few steps, from when the sceptre was handed to her to when she passed it to Pharazon, she was Queen.

When she was young, when she had not fully internalised how such a thing would happen, she idly wondered what it would feel like to be Queen.

Being queen felt like tight tension in her guts, and a ringing silence.

She held the sceptre out to Pharazon, and repeated the ritual words (so similar to what the officiant said.) “I hand the royal sceptre to you, which has been in Númenor’s keeping since the days of Elros Tar-Minyatur. Long may you hold it, and long may Númenor prosper under your reign. I name thee, new king, Ar-Pharazon.”

Ar-Pharazon took the sceptre out of her hands. Without its weight, she felt so light that she feared she would tip over backwards.

Ar-Pharazon spoke, with no pause to remember words, barrelling straight through the ceremony. “As your husband, I shall cherish and care for you, as you will after me, as will both us do to our children. I name thee, new queen and new wife, Ar-Zimraphel.”

The name—the realisation that this is what people would call her, bar her little circle of the Faithful in their little, that her real name would be in a tongue banned from speech, if what her husband had ranted about was true—hit her like a slap.

The kiss he pressed to her lips, sealing their compact, was like a mace blow from the sceptre itself.


	3. Seven of Cups/Five of Cups

Guarding rocks was easy. Rocks did not get up and walk away. Not unless someone picked them up—and then you could generally see them doing that, or you’d get everyone to turn out their pockets, or something. They didn’t just _disappear_.

Royalty, however? Apparently royalty did get up and walk away, and disappear into the wild blue yonder.

And Ar-Zimraphel seemed to be a master of stealth. One minute she’d be there, Zimrazagar would look down at her glass of water and take a swig, and poof! She’d be gone. It was maddening. It shouldn’t be happening. Where did Zimraphel learn to be so stealthy? She’d’ve been an asset to the scout corps, that’s for sure. But she was a queen, and not a solider, and she should not be doing this!

Firstly, what if she disappeared and got into trouble? It was Zimrazagar’s job to stop that from happening, and she couldn’t very well do it when the Queen had disappeared like a cat into a closet. And even if she wasn’t actually in much danger (and who knows if _that_ was true), Zimrazagar couldn’t bloody well spy on her either if she didn’t know where she was.

It was frustrating. It made her look like a fool. She did not care for it one bit.

Zimrazagar walked over to one of the royal secretaries, Todaphel. “Does the Queen have any events on?” she asked, trying to sound chipper and professional and not on the verge of attacking a wall in exasperation.

“Not to my knowledge, no.” Todaphel, the royal secretary looked up at her, with an air of someone tired of people not being as good at their jobs she was. “Why do you ask?” she said, a little sarcastically.

She tried to save face. “I just wanted to check she wasn’t missing anything scheduled—”

“She’s gone missing, hasn’t she?”

Zimrazagar sighed, a deflated. There really was no point lying to Todaphel, was there? “Yes.”

She pushed her glasses up her nose. “That’s unfortunate.” _For you._ She turned back to her ledgers.

Zimrazagar stalked off, not even bothering to cover her annoyance now. What was the point? She was failing at her mission in a manner that seemed very stupid (if only because no one would believe her about how stealthy the Queen bloody was), and everyone who mattered seemed to know.

Was the queen secretly a cat burglar? That seemed to be the only rational explanation. In a fit of youthful rebelliousness, she’d learned how to stalk the rooftops so as to steal from dukes and earls and give their prized heirlooms to the poor. It would be in character, as far as Zimrazagar knew, and it explained why she could disappear

Zimrazagar searched the rest of the palace—likely places, unlikely places, every single place she could get into. She’d done this multiple before, with little success, but she had to try. Had to at least look she was trying, and had the situation under something the resembled control

She returned to the Queen’s rooms nearly an hour later.

Ar-Zimraphel sat curled up on her couch, quietly embroidering.

“Really!?” Zimrazagar exclaimed. She was in the presence of royalty, she shouldn’t be rude, but _damn. it_. _No._

Ar-Zimraphel looked up, nonchalant.

Zimrazagar inhaled sharply. “My job is to guard you. I can not do that if I don’t know where you are. This is disappearing act is—mmf--it’s just— _stop it_. Please.”

Ar-Zimraphel put down her embroidery. She arched an eyebrow. “This is about my safety?”

“ _Yes._ I’m no use to you if I don’t know where you are. Do you have a death wish?”

Ar-Zimraphel looked at her hard, through red eyes with deep bags under them.

It was the wrong thing to say, in hindsight, but it was true. “For a soon to pass, unnatural one?” she said, gesturing wildly.

“It is my life to risk.”

“It is Númenor’s, as much as it is your own. And it is my duty to protect you. I can’t let you get attacked when I have no way to protect you. I couldn’t—” She didn’t know how to end that sentence. There was no way that was both true and good.

Ar-Zimraphel remained the picture of calm and decorum. “You wish to follow me wherever I go.”

“Yes, my lady.” _That is my job! Let me do it! Please!_

Ar-Zimraphel nodded, and went back to her embroidery.

* * *

A week passed, in relative calm. Miriel had no pressing reason to leave Zimrazagar, so to soothe her guard’s agitation, she didn’t. The close quarters were a little—stifling, but Miriel had to admit Zimrazagar was good company. (Especially when she wasn’t a little ball of frustration stuffed into a human body.)

But soon, it came time for another meeting among the Faithful. She was of course going to attend. It was important that she went—both for the circle, and for herself. For the circle, because they needed as many members as they could get, and they took comfort in knowing they had at least some friends in high places. And for herself—the ritual was soothing. As was the company, the company where even if she hide some of herself, she could at least reveal parts, was important.

Seeing as Zimrazagar was insistent on following her, she would come too.

This was not to say she fully trusted Zimrazagar. She did not Especially with how little she wanted her to be out of her sight. But Miriel had little choice. She had noticed the disappearing, and would eventually find where she went. It would be better for her to find out on Miriel’s terms, where she had a chance to control the message. (And equally, a chance to mark Zimrazagar as a co-conspirator, one who had gone to a meeting of the Faithful willingly. She was not one for such mutual blackmail, but things were as they were.)

And some overly optimistic part of her wondered, that if Zimrazagar was not Faithful, maybe meeting Faithful would change her mind. It was quite possible to live your life nowadays, and never knowingly meet one of them. It was easy enough to get funny ideas about people you’d never met, and while meeting them was not a complete cure, it was something.

She did not trust Zimrazagar. Zimrazagar seemed, as far as she could tell, to be a King’s Man.

But Zimrazagar seemed to be a good sort. And Miriel liked to think that most good sorts could be turned to the truth.

Miriel looked Zimrazagar up and down, evaluating her look. She wore the uniform of a palace guard, and the breast plate was still shiny and silvery, with little wear.

Zimrazagar followed her gaze, one eyebrow raised in confusion.

“If you want to follow me, you’ll have to wear something different.”

“What?”

“Your current attire would attract the wrong sort of attention where we are going.” Miriel stood up dug through her drawers. Something in here had to fit her--

“If a palace guard would not be welcome, should you really be going there?”

Miriel held out a cloak—a lack one, with a half-finished embroidery of white unicorns and skulls. “Would you at least wear a cloak over the top?”

Zimrazagar reluctantly took, and settled it over her shoulders. She pinned it in place, and fiddled with it so the edges draped over her breastplate hiding.

Miriel cocked her head. “That will do. For now. Oh, and you’ll need a different name to go by.”

Her eyebrow raised again. “A different one? Why would I need another name? Where exactly are we going?”

Miriel ignored the question. She’d have her answers soon enough. “Does Amruniel suit?”

Zimrazagar tensed, mouth going thin. “That… sounds elven.”

“Yes. Sindarin, to be specific. If it bothers you so much, you could always pick a Quenya name,” she said, with false cheer.

Zimrazagar’s confusion and alarm grew, and her cheek scrunched up. She then deliberately relaxed herself. “If I must be referred to as Amruniel, I will allow that.” 

“Good. And as a note, while I am there, I am Miriel.” Miriel opened the window. It wasn’t her preferred method of exiting, but she didn’t trust Zimrazagar with her preferred method. Not yet.

She paused on the ledge. This could go badly. There were so many ways this could go badly. Zimrazagar could be untrustworthy. Very unstrustworthy. Meeting Faithful could cement her dislike, rather than washing it away. She could turn the whole circle in to the courts of the King.

But Zimrazagar seemed like a good sort. Honourable. Miriel sighed. Shehad no evidence, just foolish gut feel—but she wanted company. She’d grown to… tolerate Zimrazagar’s presence. Not dislike it. And she couldn’t keep sneaking forever. One day, Zimrazagar would find her best route, and--

This would be a good test of her trustworthiness. How does she deal with Faithful? Can she deal with them? “I do have to ask for your discretion if you follow me.”

Zimrazagar did not hesitate. “Whatever you wish for, my lady.”

Miriel slipped out the window. “Follow me.”

* * *

Zimrazagar hopped out the window, and followed as Miriel lightly picked her way across the rooftops. She felt like bull chasing a cat, all weight and galumph across the slate.

Miriel landed gently in a garden, and walked sedately her way to towards the university, as if she hadn’t just escaped out of the palace via the roofs.

The university was somewhat affiliated with the palace, but was mostly separate. But even so, if that’s where they were heading, why would she need to hide her armour? There was no reason for a palace guard to be unwelcome there.

They walked for twenty minutes, up and down stairs, through corridors, past towering shelves of books, and finally into a storage space beneath a telescope. Inside, reams and scrolls and books of observations were packed tight in shelves and boxes. There were enough to go back a few centuries, depending on their detail, Zimrazagar guess. The room was dark and dusty and forgotten, with smudged layers of footprints pressed into the dust.

It was a forgotten room. Like the weird little storage area she’d once found at the Fort of Bright Water. Lonely, but not completely undisturbed. She remembered the feeling she had when she’d walked in there accidentally. That feeling of finding a room that must have been lost for generations, but that felt like she had just missed someone walking out of it.

Miriel sat cross legged on the floor.

Zimrazagar followed suit.

Shortly after, a man in scholarly robes bustled through. He pushed his glasses up his nose with one hand, and carried another box of notes in the other. “So sorry for being late, I needed something to bring in here as cover.” He shoved his box onto one of the shelves, before looking down at them. “Oh, you’ve brought a new person.” He held out a hand towards Zimrazagar. “Hello.”

She shook it. “Hello. Amruniel.”

He smiled. “Isilnuro.”

“I thought she might be interested in coming, maybe even joining our little circle,” Ar-Zimraphel explained.

_I am?_

“Oh? What brings you here?” he asked.

“Miriel,” she said, because that was the literal truth.

He smiled and pushed his glasses up again. He turned to Ar-Zimraphel, and his face softened. “How have you been going?” He asked Ar-Zimraphel.

“As well as can be expected.”

“That’s—that’s not a _high_ bar.”

“I know,” Ar-Zimraphel admitted, and afterwards she stayed silent.

One by one, more people filed in, until there was ten or so of them, sitting on the floor, hemmed in by boxes and shelves.

They waited a few minutes after the last person arrived, before Isilnuro started them off. “Thank you all for coming here. These are difficult times—and community is important.”

At the mention of ‘community,’ Zimrazagar tensed. Maybe this wasn’t what it looked like, maybe the Queen wasn’t meeting with Faithful cells—but what else could it be.

“It is unfortunate the position we have been put in with the new king, but we have, as a whole, made it through this.”

“Not as individuals, though,” said gruff, young, dark haired man.

Zimrazagar looked at him. Was that--? Not, it couldn’t have been Isildur, grandson of Amandil. For one, he lived in Romenna, and for the other—he shouldn’t have been Faithful.

(Though ‘should not’ was distinct from ‘could not.’)

Isilnuro nodded. “Not always, no. and that is important to acknowledge.”

Zimrazagar tried to keep her face blank, tried to keep her eyes from widening. This was probably a group of the Faithful. I mean, it wasn’t a complete surprise that the Queen was one of them—but she didn’t expect herself to find herself in a meeting of them. How would she convince them she was one of them. (She was fairly sure the rumours of the Faithful trying to induct people via murder were just that, nonsense rumours. But she was outnumbered ten to one... She was glad she had her sword.)

“Would anyone like to speak?” Isilnuro asked.

There was a pause, before someone Zimrazagar did not recognise spoke up. “I mourn for the King.” She turned to Ar-Zimraphel, in fear of causing offence, but Ar-Zimraphel just nodded for her to continue. “I know I shouldn’t. I didn’t know him, and he’s with Eru now, but—"

“It’s understandable,” said Isilnuro. “And mourning is no wrong, if it is for your rather than the dead.”

 _Yep, these are Faithful._ Ar-Zimraphel was definitely up to—okay, this wasn’t necessarily being up to that much, but it was something.

Zimrazagar swallowed. She had an in with a circle of Faithful. That was important. The King would want to know this, want to know who to watch to stop them from trying to harm Númenor. She tried to memorise the faces, without staring, tried to memorise the names when they were said, even if they were code names.

 _Wait, is that Amandil?_ That didn’t seem right—but it did explain why someone who looked alarmingly like Isildur was there.

She focused on the faces so much, that she missed most of what the people were saying. A fair bit of ‘Yay Eru! Yay Death! I love the idea of rotting in a hole in the ground’ and worrying amount of ‘Boo Ar-Pharazon’ (especially worrying in the light of the amount of “Yay Death”)—but also a lot of people being sad or scared or worried.

Ar-Zimraphel stayed quiet.

After awhile, he meeting slowed down and people left one by one.

Zimrazagar stood up, and held out a hand to help Ar-Zimraphel up. As she did, her cloak fell back, revealing her breastplate. She twitched the cloak back over it, hoping no one had noticed.

Isilnuro still saw it. He looked at where the shiny metal had shown through, before looking back up at her face.

He walked over.

She put a hand on her sword. The cloak should hide the movement, but if he spotted it, so be it. Ar-Zimraphel had been clear that being seen in her uniform could be dangerous.

Ar-Zimraphel tensed beside her, and held her wrist, gently, but enough to stop her drawing her sword.

Isilnuro smiled, and bowed. “Thank you for coming. It’s is always good to see a new face. And, in case you weren’t told, you are allowed to talk.”

She relaxed, and somehow ended up shaky with it. “I worked that out. I just didn’t really have anything to say.”

He nodded. “And I do hope you come next time.”

“I fully intend to.”

She and Ar-Zimraphel left.

Zimrazagar leaned over to whisper to her. “Is that where you disappear to?”

“Not always there.”

She nodded.

She had to tell Ar-Pharazon. His wife was going to meetings with the Faithful. One of his generals may very well be as well. These meetings were speaking against them. She knew where they were meeting, at least sometimes.

She wasn’t a good spy. She was a soldier. But she’d started out as a shit soldier. She might be a shit spy now, but she was well on her way to being good.

They walked back. “They called you ‘Miriel’ there,” Zimrazagar said.

“They did, yes.”

She frowned, confused. “Weren’t the names meant to be disguises?”

Miriel smiled, tightly and with great politic and politeness. “Of course. Miriel is not my name, you know that.”

* * *

Miriel worked on her pomegranate and poppy embroidery to give her hands something to do.

Zimrazagar had been quiet during the meeting, but she had been _listening_. She hadn’t immediately freaked out. That was something,

But was it worth the risk?

These were troubled times. Bringing random people into a circle of Faithfu willy-nilly— there were so many ways it could go wrong. Bringing someone who might be working directly for the King, or worse, the King’s Men, could go even more wrong.

But Zimrazagar seemed reasonably trustworthy. Straight forward enough that she was probably only what she appeared to be. Just a bodyguard.

And having it be known that Miriel was in meetings with the Faithful—what did Ar-Pharazon expect, exactly, if he thought otherwise? She had never been that subtle. Having it be known where she was going, that she was ‘merely’ Faithful, may cause less concern in the long run.

Plus, it was quite possible that Zimrazagar’s original concern was true. Again, if she was just a bodyguard, why wouldn’t she be concerned? Her charge was disappearing, possibly into danger

She tied off the bright red she had been stitching with, and cut off a section of duller red thread for the shadows.

The circle knew the risks too, and had not thrown Zimrazagar out. That was also something, a positive sign. …Had the circle on let Zimrazagar in because she, Miriel, had taken her there? Was this mere favouritism, royal privilege at work? She hoped it was not. It would be nice to at least have the pretence of them all being equals, and the having people not immediately her judgment. She could be wrong, and she hoped people would stop her if she was.

There was a knock on the door, and without a pause to be invited in, Ar-Pharazon entered. “Hello.”

“Hello,” Miriel replied. She looked up from her embroidery. “Is there something you want?” They did not speak much, or see each other much, since their coronation, and there were only two reasons she could think of that would make him want to meet with her.

The first was royal councils, were he had to keep up the pretense co-rulership.

The other—

Zimrazagar hastily but politely exited. That was probably for the best.

They could both make a reasonable guess what he was here for.

Maintaining royal line, creating heirs, and the messy that that entails.

He walked over, and held up her chin. It was probably meant to be a sensual or charming gesture, or something, but it much failed. “Yes,” he said, in answer to her question.

“Well, you’re going to have to tell me,” she said, staring hard into his eyes. He was going to have to say what he wanted, if he wanted to get it. If he was going to insist on this happening, he could use his words like an _adult_.

She could smell the sweat on him, mingled horse and human, that he hadn’t bothered wash off. Stubble prickled out of his cheeks, unshaved since this morning. “It is… hard to say,” he said, still trying to be charming, and still failing.

“If you cannot even say it—”

He paused, likely thinking of the best way to phrase it. “I want to make up for our wedding night.”

So, at least he was aware that was an unmitigated disaster. That was refreshingly self-aware. Not enough to make her keen for her wifely duties—but this is what she signed up for. She had agreed to this, to save herself from the political catastrophe her reign would have been, to hand the sceptre to someone who could at least attempt to _do_ something with it.

She could live with it. “Certainly, sir.”

Ar-Pharazon smiled, and undoing the clasps of his robes.

* * *

Zimrazagar closed the door behind her. This was the perfect opportunity to report what she found without raising Ar-Zimraphel’s suspicions—provided she wasn’t caught being missing. (…It would be a bit hypocritical to be missing while she railed against Ar-Zimraphel’s own disappearances.)

How long did she have, though? How long would it take them to, uh, ensure heirs?

…there were no good answers there.

She jogged over to Todaphel’s office. She hadn’t been officially made Zimrazagar’s handler, but she may as well have been. Plus, she could trust that anything she said would be kept in confidence from anyone who wasn’t meant to know, and told in precise and exacting detail to anyone who was.

Todaphel worked by the light of an oil lamp, writing Ar-Pharazon’s schedule for tomorrow. She looked up, lamplight glinting off her glasses. “What is it?”

“I have something to report about our Queen.”

“Yes?” She looked bored and unimpressed.

Nuh-uh. That wouldn’t do. She’d gained Ar-Zimraphel’s trust and good intel, and she was getting Todaphel to _acknowledge_ that. “She’s been going to secret meetings of The Faithful.” Zimrazagar put her hands on the desk and leaned forward. “And I got invited to one. Attended it, even.”

Todaphel’s expression did not obviously change, but Zimrazagar would like to say she saw a flicker of surprise. She took out a fresh sheet of paper, and dipper her pen in the inkwell. “Did you get names?”

Zimrazagar straightened up, taking her hands of the desk. “Only aliases, unfortunately. But I have physical descriptions. I know where they met. I know what they talked about.” Her voice dropped. “They spoke ill of the king.”

Todaphel nodded seriously. “Give me everything you noticed. No detail is too small in this. I don’t want something vital going unrecorded.”

Zimrazagar nodded. _Here’s hoping the king has the same stamina in love as in war._ She gave a detailed description of the route and the room. Descriptions of everyone’s face and dress. She kept it dry, objective, factual, only things she could precisely remember, with no interpretation (no _I swear I saw Amandil, he called himself something else but I swear that was his face, but surely it cannot be? And I say his grandson, too--)_ She wished she had remembered what they said better; she’d make an effort to get that next time. (If there was a next time. It was a banned group, and maybe they would all be arrested. Or they would notice the spy in their midst--)

When she was done, she saluted and ran back to Ar-Zimraphel’s room, hoping that the King and Queen wouldn’t be done.

She stood outside the door. It was quiet. Very quiet. _Maybe they are both asleep?_ Though considering how rarely they were in the same room-- She opened the door a crack, willing the hinges to quiet and peaked through.

Ar-Pharazon was nowhere to be found.

She’d mistimed it.

_Drat._

Ar-Zimraphel stared out the window, looking tired and a little melancholy. She turned at the sound of door opening. “You weren’t here.”

She tried to think of a way to twist what she did into something that was both truthful and didn’t incriminate her, something about being pulled away by guard duties—but it didn’t come together. “…I thought you might have wanted some privacy.” Because she certainly hoped she did. “And I, uh, misjudged my timing. My apologies, my lady.”

She turned back to the window. “Don’t apologise. I appreciate the sentiment.”

Zimrazagar stepped in to the room. She felt stupid, and guilty, and—guilty for being guilty? She was here to spy on Ar-Zimraphel, not keep her company. Any lies by omission were acceptable, no, _right_ , in the circumstances. And she didn’t need to be there if Ar-Pharazon was. Maybe if she was _truly_ a bodyguard, there was an argument for her being there all the time, but if she was just a spy and Ar-Pharazon was there--

But Ar-Zimraphel seemed lonely, standing by the window, watching the Moon.

It didn’t matter if she didn’t be there.

Ar-Zimraphel was Queen now. Queen because her father died. That would be hard for anyone, even the Faithful. And did that Circle even properly have room for her grief? And her husband—even if in time they got along, right now they barely counted as company for each other.

Did Ar-Zimraphel need a confidante, one who would understand and would listen?

She wanted to keep her company. Wanted to be whatever comfort she could be. She wanted it to soothe her guilty conscience, and it was foolish—but she wanted to. “If it pleases you, my lady, I would guard you tonight, to make up for my laxity.”

Ar-Zimraphel turned, and started rearranging her pillows. “That is not necessary. You do need to sleep.”

She saw her Zimraphel’s eyes, dark and sad and tired—you should not leave someone like that in a big dark room on their own. It was _wrong_.

“If that is your concern, then I will sleep by the door. Any ne’er do wells will have to trip over me to do you harm.” She smiled, aiming for rogue-ish and hitting awkward instead.

Ar-Zimraphel stepped into her bed. “That is very much not necessary.”

Zimrazagar lay down on the floor. “It very much is. I am your bodyguard, and thus the expert on your safety.”

“I do not want you losing sleep on my account.”

She looked up at her. “I would lose more sleep if I was not with you.” –which was true, but probably more true and vulnerable than she intended. But did that matter.

Ar-Zimraphel paused, then nodded her assent, climbing fully under her covers.

Zimrazagar closed her eyes, listening to the sound of the wind outside the windows, and the breathing of her Queen.

* * *

Miriel woke in the middle of the night. A cool breeze came in from the window, cold enough that it pushed her into wakefulness.

She wondered-- She sat up, and looked at the floor, to check.

Zimrazagar still lay there, framed by the moonlight coming through the windows, and curled up in a little ball. She hadn’t moved, or gone to her own bed (or even the _couch_ ), just stayed there curled up on a rug.

Like a loyal guard dog.

She wished she had some more self-respect. They had known each other for all of a week, and already Zimrazagar was determined to not to let Miriel out of her sight. It could have been creepy-- but it was not. And it could have merely been duty—but if it was duty, she would taken the order to go to her own bed. This was something else. Loyalty, perhaps?

She appreciated it. Appreciated having someone who cared so much about her that they would sleep on her floor.

She shouldn’t think like that. She shouldn’t feel affection because someone was being self-sacrificing like that. That sort of thinking always brought out the worst in people, especially those with power.

When she was young, just before she entered court, her father had told her, “The country is more important than you. It always will be. And the serfs and the citizens are the country. They are who matter. You cannot forget that, lest you fall into evil.”

She nodded seriously, and wondered what sort of horrible person could forget that.

And yet, here she was, thinking someone putting their back out on a hard floor was adorable.

She stood up, and took a blanket off her bed. If she was cold, lying on a mattress, she did not know how Zimrazagar was staying on the tile floor. She gently padded over to her, and draped the blanket over her, trying not to disturb her. There, at least she wouldn’t be cold while she was being as loyal as a dog.

Zimrazagar stirred, and opened her eyes, blinking slowly and tiredly.

“I was concerned you were cold,” Miriel said

“You didn’t have to,” Zimrazagar said, the way she wrapped the blanket around her showing the lie of that statement.

“I wanted to.”

Zimrazagar half nodded, closed her eyes, and fell back to sleep always immediately.

Miriel climbed back to bed, guilt half-assuaged.

* * *

Dawn came through the windows, waking Zimrazgar. She blinked against the light, and slowly stretched her back out. Turns out floors are hard, and not ideal sleeping places _. Ow_.

She sat up.

Miriel was already up. She stood by her armoire, carefully picking the leaves off a plant. It was hard to see the plant through sleep blurred eyes, and Miriel was silhouetted by the morning sun—but that it wasn’t any plant.

It was shepherdess’s friend. (So called, because if you rolled with someone in the fields, as shepherdesses were supposedly wont to do, and it was a bad idea and you really wanted to avoid bastards, well, that herb was certainly your friend then. Apparently it was good for menstrual pain. _Apparently._ It had always sounded like an excuse to Zimrazagar, the explanation you gave when you were caught with it.)

Miriel was taking _shepherdess’ friend?_ She quickly lay back down on the floor, and covered herself with the gift blanket, pretending to be asleep and hoping Miriel had not noticed her.

Miriel was trying to prevent heirs.

Ar-Pharazon had to know.

But—could she? Should she? His Queen was trying to prevent him getting an heir… but it seemed wrong somehow to say. Like it would be too personal, or a betrayal of trust. But it would be betrayal of trust not to tell him. He was who she owed fealty to, not Ar-Zimraphel.

Something about how Ar-Pharazon had waltzed into the room, or the fact that he left before she retunred, and the way Zimraphel had looked last night, and the set of her shoulders this morning-- it made some animal instinct part of her brain say ‘don’t say anything. Don’t.’

She’d been a soldier long enough to know that half the time that animal instinct part of you was an idiot that jumped at shadows, and the other halt it spotted the angry man waving a pickaxe at you that vital split second before you did. You didn’t distrust that instinct unless you had a very good reason, or wanted to end up dead.

This wasn’t likely to be a matter of life and death—but she didn’t want to roll those dice. So she trusted the instinct.

She wouldn’t tell him. If she saw it happen again—maybe. If he asked specifically about it—probably. But there was a chance it was a once off, a chance that it really did work for menstrual pain.

He didn’t need to know. Not yet.

(If he realised that she had hidden something from him—that may not go well for her. She would have hid something from her king, and the her punishment would be in his hands. But she’d roll those dice any time before she rolled against her instinct.)

Ar-Zimraphel started dressing herself.

Zimrazagar kept her eyes averted. It was somewhat surprising that she didn’t have servants help her—but, well, her father was famously austere, by royal standards. Maybe she had picked it up from him. And it wasn’t her place to ask questions about it.

“I have a royal council meeting this morning. I would like you to come.”

Zimrazagar lifted herself out of the blanket, and frowned. “Why?”

“You said it yourself, earlier: there has been discontent at court. The presence of witnesses isn’t going to stop some people from trying things.”

“I would happily do whatever you want, my lady.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” she said calmly.

Zimrazagar’s frown deepened.

“You wouldn’t got to your own bed when I asked you to.” She turned to face Zimrazagar. “There’s no reason to look so crestfallen: thinking for yourself, and looking after other’s safety, are admirable qualities. Lying: less so.”

Zimrazagar stood up. “Then, considering that this is likely to lead to you being safer, I will happily do what you want in this case. Better?”

Ar-Zimrpahel smiled. “Yes.”

Zimrazagar hurriedly put her armour back on, while the Queen put her hair up in an elaborate braided bun, before heading to the council meeting.

Ar-Pharazon raised an eyebrow when he saw Zimrazagar a step behind Ar-Zimraphel. “Is there are reason she is with you?”

“You said yourself, there are ructions in court. Better to be safe the sorry,” she said primly, and possibly passive-aggressively.

Ar-Pharazon looked at her hard, but didn’t have a sensible retort, or reason to send Zimrazagar away, and so they both entered.

In the centre of the room sat an oval table, with upholstered and embroidered chairs around it. The oval lent an air of equality, but only an air. There was a head of the table, and Ar-Pharazon sat at it.

Ar-Zimraphel sat next to him.

There were only chairs for council members, so Zimrzagar stood behind the Queen, leaving a good distance between her and the chair, so that she wasn’t crowding her, nor making it too hard for people to walk past her.

Todaphel stood behind Ar-Pharazon, with a bound book’s worth of notes, and a stenographer in the shadows behind her.

“Let us open the meeting,” Ar-Pharazon said.

The meeting was roughly what Zimrazagar had imagined a royal council to be like: very boring. There was a lot of formalities and minute taking and people making speeches when they could have said ‘There’s been no changes since last time.’

Ar-Zimraphel did not speak, and just listened.

“Any other business?” Ar-Pharazon said, after the agenda was through.

A noble, dressed in clothes that were what the nobility _thought_ scholars wore, stood up and spoke. “I realise that it will not be time for budget planning for some time, but I wish to put this on the table early. There is some fascinating research coming out of the palace university on healing. Very interesting breakthroughs in life extension—”

“—But you will need more funding?” Ar-Pharazon put in.

“Not _need_ , no. Money will simply be a matter of how quickly this gets done, not whether it gets done at all. But,” He took off his glasses, and polished them on a monographed handkerchief. “When it comes to matters of life and death, time matters.”

Ar-Pharazon nodded, seemingly unconcerned with the wild lack of propriety. “We will certainly consider it.”

Zimrazagar could see how tense Ar-Zimraphel was, even from behind. Her shoulder and back muslces tensed, enough she was surprised she wasn’t shaking. This was going against what she stood for. Everyone knew that life-extension was seen as a stepping stone to ending death. That if you could extend life long enough, that was same as not ever dying.

Surely Ar-Zimraphel would be against that?

Surely she would speak up about it? She was at a council, and it was her place--

She maintained her silence, and the meeting ended.

Zimrazagar made to follow her out, but someone grabbed her arm. She swung around, free hand on the hilt of her sword.

It was Todaphel, looking more serious than usual— which was an achievement— and clearly uninterested in opening her mouth and explaining herself right now.

Ar-Zimraphel turned and frowned.

Zimrazagar gave her a jaunty wave, and a fake relaxed smile. “It’s probably just a scheduling thing. I’ll meet you in your rooms when I am done.”

Her frown deepened.

“I really do have to steal her for a minute,” Todaphel said. “I imagine the palace guards will be adequate while she is away.”

A palace guard stepped up, on cue.

Ar-Zimraphel looked unconvinced, but followed him anyway.

Todaphel took Zimrazagar through the corridors, to the room where she had had first met with Ar-Pharazon.

He even sat in the same chair. “I got your report.”

Todaphel let go of her arm, and sat in the second chair.

Zimrazagar was left standing. The room only had two. “I hope it—” she was about to say _pleases you,_ and no, that was wrong, presumably he was not filled with joy that his wife was running around with a banned death cult. “—is to your satisfaction.”

“Very much so. I want you to keep attending those meetings. Keep telling me who is there, and what they say.” He flicked the paper with the transcribed report. “I cannot act on this yet, not without compromising your cover, but this is invaluable.” He looked straight at Zimrazagar. “Convince them that you are trustworthy. Convince the queen you are trustworthy. Convince them that you are one of them. Report to Todaphel weekly.”

“Whatever you wish, sir.”

He seemed to see her discomfort, however well she was masking it by standing at attention. “I realise this is a hard ask. You are not a spy, and this is not work for a soldier—but it so rare to get an in like this.”

“I don’t shy away from hard tasks, sir. Not under your orders.”

He smiled. “I _do_ remember Knotty Hill. But I thank you for your discretion and skill.” He waved a hand. “You are dismissed.”

Zimrazagar walked back to Ar-Zimraphel’s rooms. She had to convince people she was Faithful. Somehow. She had to not ruin an apparently rare opportunity. Apparently, she was at least some of the way there. Maybe. She wasn’t sure.

…She was a soldier, not a spy, damnit! This was not her wheel house!

She opened the door to Ar-Zimraphel’s room.

Ar-Zimraphel sat on one of the couches, working on the pomegranate and poppy embroidery.

Zimrazagar sat on the couch opposite her. “Sorry about that. It was just a scheduling thing, Todaphel just got weirdly intense about it.” She smiled lopsidedly. “You know how she is.”

She didn’t look up from her sewing. “That’s good.”

Zimrazagar sat there, waiting for her to say something. To say something more than a non-committal acknowledgement, to say something about the weird silent royal council she had.

Some of that was a desire to fish for information, to have something to tell Todaphel next report, yes. But some of it was because that was really _odd._ Literally everyone else spoke, even the minor lords who’d only come to their position a month ago.

She still said nothing.

After a few minutes, Zimrazagar broke the silence. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

She finally looked up. “Hmm?”

“At the council. You just—didn’t say anything. Even when there was a guy who was talking all about ending death and living forever and—”

“It’s not my place.”

Zimrazagar blinked in confusion. “It’s the royal council. You’re the _queen_.”

She put her embroidery down firmly, smoothing the fabric over her lap. “Yes, and as queen, it’s not my place to _speak_. My role is to give my husband an excuse to be on the throne, be a lovely little stepping stone, and maybe, just maybe, if the stars align, provide him an heir.” She spoke more harshly than she’d ever heard her speak, breath hard and voice tight. She stood up suddenly, and went to the window.

Zimrazagar followed, a metre back, giving her her space. She’d seen her sad and melancholy and with a gentle blankness, but angry? Angry was new. (And this was a quiet anger. Restrained. But not weak. It was always the quietly angry ones that were dangerous. Like it was always the quiet faults, the ones that never slipped for a century or more, that ripped apart all at once and swallowed a town whole.) And that comment about heirs, and what she saw her eating this morning—

“I apologise for that outburst,” Ar-Zimraphel said tightly.

“Don’t. It barely counts as an outburst. And—and you’re allowed to feel.”

“Royalty’s first duty is to their people, and half that duty is to be a figurehead. Figureheads are meant to be calm.”

Zimrazagar stepped up next to her.

Ar-Zimraphel’s face was red, blood showing through in blotches.

“You’re not in public. It’s only me—and I don’t mind if you get angry. Of course I’d prefer you to be happy, but I prefer angry over hiding it. And you said it yourself: Ar-Pharazon is king. It’s his job to pour the oil over troubled waters. Not you.”

Ar-Zimraphel smiled, looking marginally calmer. “You speak well.”

Zimrazagar shrugged. “It’s half the reason I got picked for this job.”

Miriel frowned slightly. “Is that so?”

She paused _. How to phrase that without giving away too much, how to phrase without actually lying?_ “Ar-Pharazon mentioned that one of the reasons he picked me was because my squad’s morale was always high. Sign of competence, and all that. And three quarters of that was dealing with the same—uh, bovine manure—as they were, but a bit was talking good.”

Ar-Zimraphel put her hand to her mouth, covering up a smile. “Well, I do hope working with me is providing a much better quality of bovine manure.”

Zimrazagar put her hands on her hips and smile mischieviously. “Certainly, ma’am. It’s much fancier around here. Got flecks of gold in it and everything.”

Ar-Zimraphel actually giggled at that.

(It was the first time she had heard her laugh.

It was a pretty laugh.)

* * *

Ar-Zimraphel worked on the poppy and pomegranates dress, nearly back around at the beginning of the embroidered band

“Have you actually gotten out of that chair today?” Zimrazagar joked, aiming for gentle teasing.

Ar-Zimraphel frowned. “I do not actually remember.”

 _Okay, that’s an issue._ One shouldn’t be in a chair all day; it was unhealthy. “I don’t want you to get cabin fever. Or royal room fever, as the case may be.” Zimrazagar chewed her lip, thinking. What would get her out of her chair. The only thing she’d noticed Ar-Zimraphel go out of her rooms for was the meetings of the Faithful, and there wasn’t one on today. “What would you like to do?”

She put down the fabric. “It has been an awful long time since I rode. And the royal park is lovely. Do you ride, Zimrazagar?”

“I pay a fair chunk of my salary to keeping my horse agisted here.” She snuck off in her rare breaks to check on Birchie, her horse. But her schedule left her time for care, but not much riding. Birche must have been going spare from lack of exercise, and be rather fresh.

A fresh Birchie was a worrying thought.

Ar-Zimraphel stood up. “Well, I’m going to have to talk to the grooms about that, you paying that much simply won’t do. But I think a ride shall be good for both of us.” She quickly changed into her riding clothes, and they headed down to the stables together.

The grooms bustled about, trying to make everything look as neat and sparkling for the Queen on short notice.

Ar-Zimraphel leaned over and in murmured in Zimrazagar’s ear. “It’s as if they think I’ve never seen manure.”

“Well, have you?”

“Darling, I ride horses.”

A groom jogged over, carefully not to break into a run that would spook some of the more sensitive horses. “Who would you like to ride, my lady?”

“I think Rocharan will do nicely for today, thank you.”

He nodded and slowly hurried over to Rocharan.

Ar-Zimraphel stood there, the eye of a storm of grooms and strappers

Zimrazagar realised, belatedly, that she was being ignored by the grooms. “I’ll just—go and catch and tack up my horse,” she said.

“Sorry about this,” Ar-Zimraphel said.

“No, I understand, you’re the Queen, I’m not. Just— don’t get stabbed while I’m away.”

“I will try and avoid that.”

Zimrazagar went to the secondary tack room—the one for the non-royal horses, the one who’s saddles weren’t stitched with gold thread, as far as Zimrazagar could tell— grabbed Birchie’s bridle, and hoisted her saddle and blanket over her shoulder.

She walked to the paddock Birchie lived in, with the other non-royal not-broodmares, teetering under the weight of the saddle. She’d need to catch up on her training and exercise, if a saddle was causing her trouble… but they were awkward to carry, even when she was at her peak.

She balanced the saddle on the fence, as she went to open the gate.

Birchie spotted her from across the field, and cantered toward her, tossing her head and stretching her stride in excitement. She slammed to a stop in front of Zimrazagar, and rubbed her face on her shirt.

Zimrazagar gently pushed her nose away, and offered her hands to rub instead. “And you did that even when you saw me carrying a saddle. Gee, I must be neglecting you if you are this excited to do work,” she joked.

Even in the paddock with the mares that didn’t cost ten times the average salary, Birchie stood out. She was rougher around the edges, with feather on her fetlocks and a coarser head. She stood somewhere between a large pony and small horse, and was built like a cart horse because, well, she was one. She had been one of the cart pullers back on campaign, and Zimrazagar had grown attached to this excitable little feisty pony-horse with an inadequate fear of death. When she was heading back him, and she knew she’d need a horse to get around, Birchie wasn’t needed on campaign any more, and it worked out.

Even with her turned out, she’d been groomed enough that she didn’t need to be groomed to put a saddle on.

She bridled and saddled her, and Birchie only pulled a little bit of a face as the girth tightened.

Zimrazagar stood on the fence, using it as a mounting block. She managed to mount successfully, without pitching right over the other side of Birchie, or landing toon heavily on her back, but oh boy was it not graceful. It involved teetering, and a white knuckled grip on the front and back of the saddle.

She hoped no one had spotted it.

Ar-Zimraphel watched her, sat on a large glossy bay gelding. He was tall, well built, well conformed, but she could see the grey growing on his knees, and the slight knife neck. He was well cared for, and well exercised, and had a good build, but he was an old man.

Ar-Zimraphel patted his neck, when she saw Zimrazagar looking at him. “He’s a lovely boy, isn’t he? I know he’s been ridden in lessons for the young ones, but I do worry about him being lonely.”

Birchie reached out to sniff him, and Rocharan bumped noses with her.

“Ready to go?” Zimrazagar asked.

Ar-Zimraphel nodded. “How is your horse with stream crossings?”

“Birchie’s a marvel at it.” She’d pulled half ton loads across something that was better classed as a river. She could certainly cross streams.

“There’s a lovely trail I know, that crosses one of the streams coming off the hills.”

“You know this park far better than me. I will defer to your guidance.”

Ar-Zimraphel nodded and they set off.

They rode mostly in silence, up gravel roads that wound up and down hills, through a gently swaying pine forest, and crossing the creak that burbled through a small valley.

Birchie walked through the stream with cool, calm confidence, and generally not like a maniac.

She took the hills… less like that. She wanted to run and race up them, and kept nearly leaving Rocharan behind despite his longer stride length. It took a lot of effort and attention to keep her at a trot. She shook her head as she trotted, and her trot was the jarring bounce festival of a cart horse.

But when they actually cantered up a hill, Rocharan took it in long, slow, smooth strides and still stayed caught up with Birchie, while she cantered like a maniac who had had too many cups of coffee.

They slowed to a trot at the top of the hill, and Ar-Zimraphel definitely giggled at the way Birchie ran. “I’m not laughing at you,” she explained “It’s just she runs so silly. It’d be the perfect stride, if it was less--—”

Zimrazagar tried to pull Birchie back to a reasonable trot that wasn’t trying to shake her hip bones out of her body “—if it wasn’t being done by a complete bastard of a horse?”

Birchie tossed her head more, and then actually slowed to a sane, collected trot.

“I know people who work so hard to get a horse with a stride like that, and here Birchie is,” Ar-Zimraphel said, her laughter slowly winding down.

Zimrazagar patter Birchie’s neck. “Birchie is the best bastard I know.”

Rocharan spotted the grass at the side of the track, and dropped his head and tried to make a beeline for it.

Ar-Zimraphel pulled his head up and tried to urge him forward. “Rocharan, stop it!” she muttered. She turned back to Zimrazagar, still smiling. “I think that is the horse condition, right there. Or the rider condition, at least.”

They slowed back down to a walk, and headed back down the hill towards home.

Birchie strode forward with purpose, even when Zimrazagar let her reins loose so she could stretch her neck out and cool down.

Miriel didn’t loosen Rocharan’s reins, lest he decide to go for an impromptu snack again.

“I haven’t ridden since my father died,” Ar-Zimraphel said, looking straight ahead on the path.

Zimrazagar did not know how to respond to that.

“We went riding together, when we had the time. And after he died—well, I was so busy, and it was a sore spot, I guess.”

“The space the dead leave—it’s like a chunk of flesh missing. Hard not to notice. Hard not to be sore,” Zimrazagar said.

Ar-Zimraphel nodded. “And it’s not the same riding without company. Thank you for coming—I know it’s your job—but thank you for the good company.” She paused. “And I want to make it clear I am not treating you as a replacement, that would be unfair to you both. But you are good company, in your own right.”

“I’m glad I’m not replacing him.” She frowned. “I’m not sure he would have liked me.” Maybe that was showing too much of her true colours—but it was the truth, and edited truth had served her well so far.

“I think he would have. He may not have been thrilled about your career choice—but he cared about honour. Duty. Self-sacrifice.” She turned to look at Zimrazagar, and made deliberate eye contact. “Being a good conversationalist with good stories.”

“He sounds like a good person. I would have liked to meet him.” Which was not true back then, when he was alive—she would not have spoken her king, because she was a loyal subject. But she seriously considered, back when Tar-Palantir ruled. But now she had met Ar-Zimraphel, and if father was anything like daughter—

“He was. You would have.”

They returned to the stables in silence.

A flurry of grooms descended on Ar-Zimraphel, helping her dismount and put Rocharan back in his stable.

Zimrazagar dismounted Birchie, took off her tack in the paddock, scraped off her sweat and brushed her coat, and let her go free.

Birchie grazed at the grass next to her feet. After a second, she looked up at something behind Zimrazagar.

She turned around.

Ar-Zimraphel stood behind her. “Ready? Or do you want to spend some more time with Birchie?”

“I’m ready to go wherever you wish to go, ma’am.”

She nodded, and walked away.

Zimrazagar followed her.

<hr>

They sipped tea together by the light of the afternoon sun. Ar-Zimraphel insisted on sharing such rituals where she could. (“I would not be fair for me to drink while you just watched, now come sit down, have a cup, I insist—“)

Today, she looked at the sword on Zimrazagar’s hip, like it was the first time she had properly seen it.

It felt weird. Like Ar-Zimraphel was staring at and evaluating _her_ —which she kind of was, because her sword was attached to her at the moment, but it was also something else That sword was an extension of her. Ar-Zimraphel stared at one of the tools she used to interact with the world, and it was about as weird as if she were staring at and judging her hands.

“Is there a problem, my lady?” she said, trying to break her gaze.

It didn’t work. She frowned deeper, and she squinted at the sword. “Is that a standard issue palace guard sword?”

“No, it’s the sword I was given when I was first on campaign.”

Ar-Zimraphel looked up at her face, with a mixture of confusion, concern, and muted horror. “Hmm.” She turned away, went to her writing desk, and scribbled something down.

“Hmm? Hmmmm? Why ‘hmmmm’?”

* * *

This was silly. Self-indulgent.

No, this was worse than that. She was indulging someone else, a servant of hers, purely to please _herself_. That had to be more wrong. Somehow.

But a campaign sword! A campaign sword? That wouldn’t do.

The new sword she commissioned arrived promptly, despite its artisanship. One of the few advantages of being Queen.

It was a good thing, because any delay meant that Zimrazagar was using a campaign sword for longer, and goodness gracious, that wouldn’t do! She would not allow it, if she had any say about it, and thankfully she did. The thought of Zimrazagar having to wield _that_ \--

The next day, she presented it to Zimrazagar. The new sword came wrapped in red silk, and she felt no need to present it any other way. “I have something for you.”

Zimrazagar looked slightly puzzled, but took it of her hands, and started unwrapped the fabric.

Her eyes widened when she saw the scabbard underneath. It was finely crafted, made of black and red leather, etched with the royal insignia of Númenor, the white tree, and various soldier’s good luck charms. The hilt was similarly black and etched, but the etchings were designed both for beauty and for grip. The end of the pommel was dark steel, studded with finely cut zircons and garnets of every colour.

She pulled the sword free, feeling the smooth slide against the scabbard, the motion the closest she’d seen Zimrazagar come to reverence. Her eyes widened more when she saw the sword. The finest steel, with intricate dark and light folding lines, honed to the finest edge.

The confusion sunk back in, winning over the initial delight. “Why?”

“My darling Zimrazagar, I know about campaign swords. I know their cost, and their quality. No matter what the blacksmiths that made them would like to claim, they do not last much more than ten years, and you have been _off_ campaign for almost that long. I do not want the tang flying out of the hilt when you are using it, least of all when you are protecting me.”

She looked back at the sword. “This is—very fine.”

“You are my guard. You deserve a fine sword.”

(There were other things she thought, but that she would never say:

‘You are a friend, one of my very few, and if I cannot use my position to get my friends fine things, than I am an even less useful royal than I already am.’

‘You stand close to me all the time. Someone who stands close to me must reflect me well, and as should have the highest quality things.’

‘You are Zimrazagar, _Jewel-sword,_ and you deserve a sword as beautiful and fine and deadly as you are.’

‘You are my guard. You deserve to be happy. This will make you happy.’)

She put it back in her scabbard, with care, holding like it was a holy object from old Avallonë. “Thank you, my lady.”

Miriel nodded.

* * *

In her rooms, Zimrazagar placed her old sword in the wooden chest at the end of her bed, gently setting it down in its own place. “Thank you, my friend,” she said to it. “You have served me well, and I honour you for that.”

It was an old soldier superstition: you treated your equipment well. Not just physically, though that was vital too, but you treated as a friend, as a trusted and ally and comrade, and with full respect, lest it turn on you.

Even if she was not likely to use that sword ever again—it had served her well. Hell, it was with her at Knotty Hill! It felt churlish to place it in a chest just because she had a _nicer_ sword—but it was getting old, as much as she and it did not want to admit that. It did not keep it’s edge as well as it once did. There was a stubborn nick that no amount of sanding could remove. And while the tang hadn’t flown out yet—well, the risk was there.

“I’m not going to forget you. You saved my life, and saved others, and I cannot forget you. I will not But it’s time to retire, before you get hurt.”

The sword didn’t say anything, because it was a sword, but its spirit seemed—less tense, and more content, more relaxed, than when she had first taken it off her hip.

She smiled, smoother the scabbard over it like she was smoothing a blanket, and closed the chest.

The new one took up that tension. It was new, and had not tasted blood yet, and like all new swords it _longed_ for it. It was what it was made for, of course it hungered.

She took it out her scabbard, and rested its blade along her lower arm, and gently, superficially sliced, right next to the scar from the old sword.

It was another old soldier’s superstition.

She cut herself half to make her it’s blood-sibling, to seal their pact to protect each other in battle. But the other half— a blood-hungry sword would look for blood in all the wrong places. Maybe from its wielder, maybe from its wielder’s allies. Best to give them their first taste of blood, to sate that hunger, at least for a little while.

After a minute, she cleaned the blood off the sword, and wrapped her arm in a bandage. It had stopped bleeding, but it couldn’t wrap it anyway.

She sat on her bed, fell backwards, and fell asleep.


	4. The Lovers/The Devil

Time passed.

Miriel and Zimrazagar grew closer, but they never crossed a certain line of intimacy, one they never quite articulated. Zimrazagar refrained from crossing due to deference to Ar-Pharazon, and Miriel refrained from fear of being cruel or selfish.

They remained regulars at meetings of the Faithful. Zimrazagar even spoke once or twice, to Isilnuro’s delight.

…She kept reporting her findings to Todaphel. It was her duty. She would fulfil it.

Action on her findings was slow, and came in strange fits and starts.

* * *

Isilnuro—called Niluben outside that little huddle of the Faithful—ran into Zimrazagar as she picked up Ar-Zimraphel’s lunch. (She had taken on the role of poison taster, nearly by accident. She wondered how much of it was trust, and how much of it was an excuse to get her out of her rooms.)

Niluben grabbed her by the sleeve and shuffled her into a disused corridor.

She could have broken his grip easily, and was half tempted to—but the look in his face made it seem like he had something to say. And it was her duty to listen.

He pushed his glasses up his nose, half missing the bridge of the frames. “I am so sorry about this, but we can not meet in the old telescope records room. Not anymore”

Zimrazagar frowned. “Why not?”

“Healing is going to take the room. They have more funding, we have less, they want to rent the room. Of course our head said yes, why would he not? We can pack those records in the archives. He doesn’t know why anyone would _care_ about that room.” Niluben ran his hands through his hair. “I do not even know why Healing wants it, something about keeping specimens cool. But it’s under _our_ telescope.” He sighed. “I really am very sorry about this.”

Zimrazagar’s mind went back to the first royal council meeting she went to, as Healing ascended in everyone’s continuous struggle to end death, ascended past its allotment in life under Tar-Palantir. That could have been it. But her mind went back, also, to her telling Todaphel that that room was where the Faithful met. If they had no where else to meet--

Her gut twisted. She’d grown a strange affection for the Faithful. They were cruel fools, in the abstract, all love of death and disregard of life—but in the close up they were kind but misguided. Cruel only by mistake. Full of sympathy otherwise.

And Niluben was a kind enough man, who had been driven to guilt and stress—and quite possibly by her actions. 

It was for the best, really. Kind by intention, cruel by action. That was the Faithful, in a nutshell. Lovely people; had to be stopped.

“I’ll let Miriel know, and—we’ll work something out.”

“First the kiln, now the telescope room—”

She shrugged, with false nonchalance. “I’m sure we’ll find something, even if we have to dig a new cellar under the telescope, or something. Or meet inside it.” She smiled, marking it as a joke.

Niluben half returned the smile, not fully comforted. “I have to go now, if I’m found wandering around here, if my department head-- I am sorry to bother you. I have to go.” He turned on his heel, and hurried away.

“No, it’s fine—” she shouted towards him, but he was some distance away already. “It’s fine.”

* * *

Zimrazagar returned to Ar-Zimraphel’s room, and handed her her food-- a simple stew that would have been a reasonable attempt at what the peasantry ate, if not for the quality of the vegetables and the slivers of rump steak. “I meet Niluben is the corridors on the way here,” she said.

Ar-Zimraphel nearly stood right out of her chair, looking ready to rush off. “Is he alright?”

“He seemed stressed?” Zimrazagar said, eyebrow raised in confusion. She couldn’t see how this was a cause for worry? “He let me know that we can’t meet under the telescope anymore, Healing’s taken it over.”

Miriel collapsed back into her chair, hand on her chest. “Oh, that’s much less concerning. –Still somewhat worrying, but…”

Zimrazagar sat down in the chair opposite, frowning. “ _Is_ Niluben alright? Generally speaking?” His only notable trait was that he was—very Faithful, but that would not be something that would worry Ar-Zimraphel. (She was about as Faithful as he was, if Zimrazagar was to judge.”

She looked up the ceiling, looking like she was working out how to phrase this. “Eru talks to him,” she said.

 _Oh._ “Is—is that a thing?” She wasn’t an expert—but that was not an idea she had encountered. To be very polite. Eru didn’t seem the _chatty_ sort. She’d have heard of it, and a lot of conflicts would be solved if he was. (“Hello all, don’t worry about the death thing. I’ve got it under control.”)

Ar-Zimraphel stirred the stew, playing with her food in a most unladylike manner. “It is to Isilnuro. And what Eru asks is pretty compelling, let’s say. He once nearly went out evangelising in the streets.”

Zimrazagar took the spoon out of her hands, a placed it into her mouth, to check for remote possibility of poison. “Oh.”

“Indeed. He’s agreed that if Eru asks him to do anything again, he wil run it by one of us, to make sure we can work out the best way to do it.” She took the spoon back, twirling it between thumb and forefinger. “Some people can be Faithful secretly. He is not one them. It’s too much of him, and-- It makes me worry for him. Not just if he shows up at my door Eru drunk and needing to be talked down. But if certain people’s patience runs out, despite his good work—I just worry. More than I should.”

She sighed. “Worrying seems sensible enough. Depending on how unsubtle he is. If you ever need me to keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn’t get into trouble, just say the word” Looking out after random Faithful wasn’t part of her mission parameters, but Niluben was a good man, who didn’t need to end up in the stocks over something stupid. And even as a member of the Faithful, it would be _hard_ for him to degrade Númenor. He was an astronomer. What was he going to do? Claim stars die, and this is somehow evidence for the ‘gift of death’ being a gift, because stars have got it too?

(That was how she justified her decision, at least.

That was how she justified her second betrayal of her mission.)

* * *

Sauron rose, the shadow in the east expanding and spreading, and his shadow cast rumours into Númenor.

_Ar-Pharazon thought. Ar-Pharazon waited for the best time to strike. Ar-Pharazon procrastinated and dilly dallied and waited for someone else to solve it. Ar-Pharazon had had enough of war, and was focused on making Númenor herself stronger._

It all depended on who you asked.

Zimrazagar’s sword hand itched. It wasn’t that she _wanted_ to go to war, not in and of itself—but there were people in danger, and she could help, and could someone please just put her on a boat going towards the problem now?

Miriel worried, and embroidered faster. Númenor wanted to go to war, war with a minor Power no less, and it was a terrible idea—but how was she going to stop her? She was a powerless Queen, relatively speaking. And if she acted, what would that do? Stop the war? Or just tip her hand? (Would she work and work and work, for no reward?) And what if this war was just, and stopping Sauron was both in Númenor’s power _and_ duty?

* * *

Sauron took Knotty Hill.

Zimrazagar’s hand itched more. Her jaw clenched, as she thought about the hill she had fought and sweated and _bled_ for in the hands of the enemy.

Miriel pretended not to notice

* * *

The Faithful meet in the pottery works. The potter’s wife may not have been keen, but without anywhere better to go, they returned.

Zimrazagar sat slumped against a clay covered table leg, half crumpled in on herself.

“Does anyone have something they wish to say?” Isilnuro asked.

Silence fell in the dust and the heat.

“I’m worried about Knotty Hill,” Zimrazagar said. It wasn’t necessarily on topic, she didn’t necessarily speak much—but it had taken over her brain, leaving no room for anything. All that effort and blood and death for nothing, The “King of Men” taking it all.

And from the rumours from the few who had managed to live and flee back to Númenor, it had not taken him much effort at all. He just rolled over the might of Númenor like it was the farmer army of a peasant kingdom. They had been stronger, more mighty during the reign of _Tar-Palantir_ , and how--?

“Agreed,” Miriel said.

Elendil spoke clearly, in tone he probably thought were comforting but were actually condescending. “I’d be more worried about all of Númenor. It is going on a war footing—”

“And what’s so wrong with that?” Zimrazagar snapped. If half of what was said about Sauron was true, Mister Self Righteous should be sharping his sword and getting on a boat.

“ I understand you are new here, Amruniel, so I won’t call you a fool _yet,”_ he said, using her assumed name. (She had never entirely got used to it, despite how long she had used it. _“_ When Númenor thinks about going to war, Númenor gets patriotic. And when Númenor gets ‘patriotic’—”

“It does not always end well,” Isilnuro explained.

Zimrazagar ran her hand over her face. “I get that,” she said, as one of the arms of said concerning patriotism, “But it would be war with Sauron—”

“War with one of the powers. That’ll go _great_ ,” someone butted in.

“We would not want another Eregion,” Isilnuro said, looking wistfully out the window.

“Eregion?” Zimrazagar asked.

“An elf city of old,” Miriel said. “Where the Rings were made.”

“I have—a lot of feelings about it,” Isilnuro explained. “It’s greatest tragedy is the death of it’s people, of course, but there is grief in all the learning lost too.”

The meeting continued, more silence than speech, oppressive worry hanging over everyone. To war, or not to war? Which would yield the lowest price, the lowest payment of grief and pain and death?

* * *

Ar-Pharazon made his decision.

Númenor would fall on Sauron like a vengeful tidal wave. Ships would be built, the army would muster, and they would ride across the ocean to defeat Sauron

Zimrazagar waited. She made ready. She kept all her things as neat and organised as possible. Kept a bag of essentials she could grab in a minute if she needed to leave. She trained whenever could. She made no plans or commitments more than a week in advance, if she could.

* * *

Towards the end, she received a letter in Todaphel’s neat hand.

_Dear “Zimrazagar” Azraindil,_

_On account of the necessity of your position as Royal Bodyguard to the Queen Ar-Zimraphel, 25th Queen of Númenor, to home defense, you will not be mustered in the current campaign._

_Regards,_

_The Office of Wartime Affairs_

She crumpled it without thinking. ‘Royal Bodyguard’ was, as a role, somewhere between ceremonial and a cover for spying. That role being “too vital” to “home defense?” That stung. She didn’t want to go to war, did not _desire_ it—but there were people being killed by Sauron right now. In a few weeks, at the end of the sea journey, her comrades would be being killed by Sauron, lest luck was on her side.

And there was nothing she could do to stop it, no way she could put even the tiniest sliver of weight in the balance, no way to save even some miniscule fraction of life, unless Sauron somehow teleported to the capital and attacked Ar-Zimraphel. Because she was “too vital” to “home defense.

It stung.

She carefully uncrumpled the letter, and put it in her footlocker underneath her old sword.

She would make the best of this, somehow.

Someone had to stay home, and it had to be her, she was going to do the best job she could. Show them all, do her duty, that sort of thing.

* * *

The harbour of Romenna was crowded. Red and gold sails fluttered in the wind. Ships’ wood creaked creaking wood. Sergeants shouted over each other as they boarded their squads, yelling louder and louder to be heard over all the other officers in such a small space. 

A small island of decorum sat on one of the piers, centred on Ar-Pharazon. He stood resplendent in his ceremonial armour, and smiling like the sun.

Miriel tried to follow his lead, but she couldn’t quite do it. She had never fully mastered the skill of fake smiling. Fake calm and decorum: yes. Smiling: no.

If there was ever a good reason to go to war, to save people from Sauron might have been it—but she could not convince herself that there ever was a good reason. That sort of thinking would only lead to excuses, rationalisations that tried to explain why bloodshed was definitely necessary, when it very much was.

So she smiled, tight lipped and tense, as her husband gave an official speech, dutifully recorded by an army of scribes.

The speech ended, and the master of arms handed him his sword.

He stepped forwards towards Miriel, still smiling. There was another tradition, before the King went to war.

She tried to brighten the smile a fraction, now that he was looking right at her.

He kissed her on the lips, all scratchy stubble and performance and formality. She kissed him back, equally formally, holding it just long enough that the scribes could record it, make it clear they had both done their duty.

Ar-Pharazon stepped away, and walked up the gangway, smiling and waving. The rest of the royal guards, those that were going across the sea, followed him.

The ship pulled up anchor, and made its way to the front of the fleet.

The patriotic crowd around them slowly faded, leaving a regiment of scribes, Miriel, and those few royal guards who had not been mustered.

Zimrazagar stood by her side. She could see her straight-backed attention slowly relax into something less tense, less formal. “I have a suggestion, my lady.”

Miriel stared at the ships, as more and more pulled up anchor and moved out of the harbour, in a stately parade or wood and cloth and men. She did not know how to feel about that sight: the sight of the army leaving, the sight of her husband leaving. “Yes?”

“I suggest we find somewhere around here that serves either alcohol or cake—your choice, of course—and have a good old ‘Thank the heavens we weren’t drafted’ celebration.”

Miriel huffed out a laugh, despite herself. “Think of the security risks.”

“I am your security.” Zimrazagar stepped closer, and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Alternatively: I know you are not against disguises.”

Miriel smiled. It was a stupid idea—but a tempting one. To, for at least an hour or two, forget the war, and forget the regency foisted on her shoulders, that she couldn’t do anything with. “I know a place, a short distance from here. A teahouse, that makes cakes that are half fruit and cream by volume.” Her father had always had them on the rare occasions when he was in Romenna. She had tagged along. They were beautiful confections of far too much cream and far too much fresh fruit, with just enough light sponge to count as cake. She had loved them as a child.

“Sounds delightful,” Zimrazagar said.

* * *

The teahouse still existed, and would still let royalty and their entourage in, and even let palace guards poke around in their kitchen (To check for poisons, Zimrazagar claimed, but Miriel had the sense she was both doing that, and trying to get a better idea of what it was they made and what looked the most delicious.)

The desserts could not live up to her heady memories of childhood. They were fine, of course—but the sugared cream was too rich for her more adult palate, and the fruit was almost turned to jam with the amount of cooking and sweetening that had been done to it. She expected this: they never could have lived up to those filtered, rose tinted memories, nothing real ever could.

But Zimrazagar, ate hers carefully spoon by spoon, savouring each mouthful like it might be her last, eyes alight as she kept discovering new layers of fruit and cake. She wiped cream off her mouth with the back of her hand, too stunned to remember her manners, and inevitably she missed a bit that stayed perched on her lips. She kept having to drink the tea to cleanse her palate, unable to deal with the onslaught of sugar and sweetness.

That was maybe as good as Miriel’s childhood memories of this place.

* * *

A week later, back in Armenelos, Ar-Zimraphel stood on the flat roof of one of the towers, staring at the horizon out as if she could see the eastern sea.

She couldn’t of course, there was too much land in the way, but Zimrazagar wasn’t sure if she cared. She stood next to her, staring out past a horizon to an invisible ocean. Ar-Pharazon was out there, somewhere. Presumably alive. Presumably. Zimrazagar felt she should be more concerned about his welfare. He was her general once, and he had cared about her welfare in the abstract, at least. But—She sighed.

She cared about him, liked him, when he was the distant general. But now that she dealt with him up close? He wasnn’t—it was hard to articulate, even in her own mind. He was good at caring in _the abstract_. But when it came to the concrete, eenh—

He seemed to think that smiling while he asked made it okay to ask anything. He seemed to only spend time with people, including his own wife, when he wanted something from them. Oh, and it was all for the good of them, or their country, but it was still abstract. And still all to his own benefit.

And he’d made a soldier a spy, thrust them into a tight knit circle of enemies, and let them muddle through it.

(The Faithful were wrong. But she couldn’t call them evil. She should have been able to, it had to be a sign she was in too deep, but she couldn’t. Her feelings were mixed, like chaff thrown in with the wheat.

And she had lied to them, and lies seemed a greater fault than the Faithful’s misplaced optimism)

At least fighting a war against Sauron was something concrete, that would help other people. But if he died out there—The succession crisis would be a thing to watch. Oh, it would be slow—Ar-Zimraphel was still alive and in line to the throne—but it’d still happen.

Unless Miriel had a secret she was not telling her. But she’d still seen her eating Shepherdess’ Friend, even the morning after their last night together before Ar-Pharazon left.

But it gnawed at her. That risk to the country.

She, foolishly, broke the silence, turning to face Ar-Zimraphel. “Do you plan to have children?”

“That’s Eru’s decision, not mine,” she said.

 _But you’re taking Sheperdess’ Friend? I’m pretty sure that wasn’t Eru’s idea? Or are you just making sure that Eru is really committed ? _She didn’t say that. “Makes sense,” she said, vaguely. She couldn’t judge, anyway. It wasn’t like she was producing little soldiers. It may have been lower stakes with her, but still.

“I am not sure I would be—the best parent.” She turned to Zimrazagar. (Was the glassy cast to her eyes tears, or just the light from the moon?). “I am not my father, nor my mother, nor my grandmother. My skills—lie elsewhere.” There was a slight shift in her tone, a slight heaviness of tongue, that Zimrazagar had learned marked her lies.

Did she think she lacked any sort of skills? The glassy cast resolved to the edge of tears.

Zimrazagar did another foolish thing. A greater breach of good sense, and the boundaries they had built between each other. But she had to do it? How could she not comfort her lady? She lay her hand gently on Miriel’s arm. “You are very skilled, my lady. I have seen it.” _I have seen your words, and how you use them carefully. I have seen the wisdom in how you read other’s words. I have seen your kindness._

She did not flinch away.

It would have been better if she had flinched away. But she did not.

After a moment, she stepped carefully to the side, a gentle reminder of the space that was meant to be between them, the walls that were meant to be kept. _We work closely together,_ the step said. _We get along. But there is a line I cannot cross. I am married. You work for me._

Zimrazagar pulled her hand away. She did not apologise—to apologise would be to vocalise what Miriel carefully left unvocalised.

There was a line they should not cross. That would be wrong for them to cross. Miriel was Queen. Zimrazagar was a liar.

They both stared at the horizon. 

* * *

Miriel sat at the head of a royal council—properly at it’s head, where Ar-Pharazon sat, with Zimrazagar and Todaphel behind her, flanking her left and right. The rest of lords sat in front of her, from Amandil to the staunchest supporter of the King, waiting for her attentions and following her lead.

Other people might have felt the power in this situation. The power to direct so many nobles and so many branches of government to their will. The symbolic power of sitting in the King’s chair, a seat that touched more power than the throne itself.

Miriel just felt tired.

As regent, she would do what she though Ar-Pharazon wished her to do. What would she achieve if she went against him? What could she achieve in her limited allotment of time, with a bureaucracy and nobility that ran slow and against her? Oh, they might pretend to listen to her, to obey her orders, but she knew how this worked. When even Tar-Palantir could not wrangle his court in his whole life, what hope did she have?

And when Ar-Pharazon returned, either in victory and defeat, and saw what she had done, what would happen to her?

So she did as Ar-Pharazon wished, and tried not to grind her teeth too badly.

“I kindly suggest that the department of Healing needs more funding, for our research into immortality. We have been making progress, but--”

“Of course,” she said, plainly, neutrally, covering her actual feelings of said research. “I will look into that possibility.”

The man looked like he could be knocked down with a feather, but nodded.

“You majesty, the budget—the budget has issues, considering our current state of war,” the treasurer said, with great tact. “We are missing a tenth of our workers, and it is having unfortunate flow on affects. And I do not believe the revenue from the war itself will bring much in. We may have to raise taxes.”

“You are, of course, the expert on that. I defer to your judgment,” she said, equally as calm and plain, and certainly not running through the possibilities, of what that could do to the economy or to the poor if he miscalculated.

The minister smiled. “Thank you, my lady.”

The meeting continued on, as she agreed to every point.

Amandil watched, stone faced. Let him judge, she thought. She doubted her could do much better, in her position.

The council eventually adjourned. She tried to keep her sigh of relief invisible and inaudible.

As she walked out, Zimrazagar walked close by her side. “Are you alright, my lady?” she asked softly.

“Certainly,” she said, lying through a blank face. “Why do you ask?”

“You haven’t been acting like yourself.”

* * *

Zimrazagar found Miriel on the tower again, watching the Eastern horizon through the darkening blue haze of twilight. It had become a nightly habit of hers. It was concerning—but Zimrazagar couldn’t say much about it. As concerning habits went, this one could be much worse.

She was crying, quietly. She did a lot of the things quietly. Even her harsh breaths had little noise, and she shook with little quivers but not violent heaves or sobs.

Zimrazagar walked up to her side. “What’s wrong?” she asked softly.

“I miss him. I’m worried about him,” she said. She didn’t have to specify who he was, with her staring out at where he should be.

Zimrazagar did not know how to thread the needle of comforting without lying. “He’s competent. He’s surrounded by competent people. He’s as safe as he can be.” She didn’t touch her, not after being rebuffed before, even if she was sure her hand on her shoulder would work better than her finest words.

“I know, it’s not just that—Why do I miss him?” She turned to face her, cheeks blotchy. “I don’t even like the man, it’s like missing the wall you’ve been bashing your head against—I really shouldn’t badmouth someone you admire, I apologise for that.”

“Don’t.”

Miriel paused, shocked. The tears stopped, as she looked at Zimrazagar, wide eyed.

“You can say what you are thinking to me. I don’t mind. And—” she sighed. “He’s a good general. A good figurehead. Maybe even as a good king. But as a person? The more I see him, the less I like him.”

Miriel smiled, more awkward and lopsided than usual. “I seem strangely the opposite.”

“It’s just—The more I talk to him, the more I think… he seems the type where, if only he ended up immortal, he wouldn’t be much bothered by it, you know? Maybe that’s unfair. I don’t know his mind. But you? You don’t want death all for yourself. That’s something.”

Miriel lay her hand on Zimrazagar’s “That is very… kind of you to say.”

“It’s the truth.” _The more I’m with him, the less I like him. The more I’m with you, the more I like you._

“He’s charming, but the charm is all surface level. But if you spend a long enough time at the surface level—well, the charm does work. And you end up missing a warmongering fool.” She squeezed Zimrazagar’s hand. “And when they’re one of the few people that touches you—” She stopped, and looked at Zimrazagar.

Zimrazagar returned her gaze, trying to read it.

She couldn’t quite make out what Miriel was thinking behind her bloodshot eyes, just that she was. She leaned forward—

\--and kissed Zimrazagar on the lips.

Her lips were soft, like someone who had the time and money to rub scented lanolin on them, who spent time indoors away from the dry and the cold. The wax of her lipstick rubbed on Zimrazagar. Her cheeks were wet, but the mammal heat quickly dried them to salt.

* * *

It was stupid and desperate, and ill thought through. A hunger for touch and connection that spasmed through her and took over her brain.

Zimrazagar felt warm and solid under her lips. Rough too, but the roughness of a real person in front of her, touching her.

She shouldn’t. She was married. Zimrazagar was her subordinate. She was her subordinate and she was frozen in place, not moving—

There were so many reasons she shouldn’t. But she paused for a second, her selfish will basking in the warmth before her higher will caught up with her.

* * *

Miriel pulled back, when she realised Zimrazagar was not returning the kiss, regret and horror tensing across her—

 _We can’t have that, can we?_ Zimrazagar kissed her back, with force and gusto and passion. All the blood heat of every ‘for tomorrow we may die’ fling of her youth, brought down to bear on someone so soft and gentle. On some level she feared Miriel may be too delicate for such a bruising kiss.

She wasn’t. She returned it, maybe with less gusto, but more care and consideration, carefully paying attention to what Zimrazagar did, the follow to her lead. Zimrazagar held her tight around the waist, not content for Ar-Zimraphel to pull back because she feared she was wronging her. She was so moral, and that was a good thing--but the way it made her careful, the way it made her treat everyone’s lives like porcelain—well, Zimrazagar wanted to gently lead her away from that habit, where applicable. Like right now.

The pulled back from each other to breaths.

Miriel held her hand to her lips, looking confused. “I should not have done that.”

Zimrazagar smiled. “I am not displeased, my lady.”

Miriel pulled back, out of Zimrazagar’s grip. “If that is how you think of that, I really have done you wrong.”

“No!” Zimrazagar breathed out, calming herself. The porcelain lives thing was a good trait, in royalty, if frustrating now. “I don’t think you did a _bad_ thing. You did not take advantage of me, Miriel.”

Her whole body relaxed at the use of her name, not her courtesy title. “Oh,” she said.

Zimrazagar closed the distance between them, and gently put a hand to Miriel’s still tacky cheek. “This is maybe a bad idea,” she said. “But I do not think it is evil.”

“I am married. I am your Queen.”

“That doesn’t matter to me. Unless you want it to.”

“It should matter to me,” she said.

“But it doesn’t?” she asked, hopefully.

Miriel gently held her hand around the wrist. “It should. It doesn’t.” She kissed her again.

* * *

Zimrazagar led her back to her rooms, gently peeling off layers of clothing and tension, touching her with practiced skill and care.

It was intense. Freeing. Wonderful. Not in some pale, idiomatic shadow of that word. No, it was an experience full of wonder, and new discoveries and joy, Zimrazagar coaxing pleasure out of her with hands and tongue.

She shouldn’t have. She was married. Zimrazagar was her subordinate. It would be a betrayal of both her and Ar-Pharazon. But it didn’t stop her. It was too—too something. Maybe it was selfishness stopping her. Maybe it was some knowledge that Zimrazagar did not do this against her own will, and that she need not consider how Ar-Pharazon felt about the matter, considering he did not care much about her. But that was selfishness too, was it not?

She could not tell.

* * *

They did it again. And then once more.

The first time could have been some passionate accident, but after three times—Well, Miriel had no sensible excuse she could muster, other than that it did not _feel_ wrong.

It seemed unwise to base one’s judgment on mere feeling, but each Man is a fool at least once in their life, as they say.

* * *

Zimrazagar lay next to Miriel, warm and cozy and skin to skin and wrapped up in too many blankets. She listened to Miriel’s breathing, as she gently stroked Zimrazagar’s hair and scalp, leaving phantom trails of fingers along it.

This was pleasant. And deeply unwise, of course. But she couldn’t bring herself to care. Leave wisdom to the scholars and the bureacrats—she was a soldier through and through, and should be expected to do reckless bullshit.

That wasn’t a good argument, but she saw no reason to find a better one.

Miriel broke the quiet. “I misnamed you,” she said. “When I called you Amruniel.”

She looked up at her. “How so?”

“Well, you aren’t an ‘East Daughter’, not by your own definition, at least.”

“Oh, is that what is meant? I’d only hoped it wasn’t insulting. Didn’t have the first clue what it was.”

“Do you consider it insulting now?”

She shrugged. “I’m east of Avallone, and west of Middle Earth. It really just depends where you draw the line. It’s not an insult, either way.”

Miriel started gathering her hair over her shoulder. “Disregarding line drawing—you’re not an anything daughter. You’re a jewel sword, through and through.”

Zimrazagar flashed a lopsided smile. “Fancy and impractical?”

Miriel looked serious. “Beautiful. Sharp. Someone you want pointing at your foes, and not at you.” She parted her hair into thirds. “Would you prefer a name that best suits that?”

“I would take any name, if it came from you.”

“Yelcamirë,” she said, as she started braiding Zimrazagar’s hair. “Archaic Quenya for ‘Jewel-sword.’ The modern quenya version is somewhat—more awkward sounding.”

“I’ll use it at the meetings, if you like. Not necessarily elsewhere—there’s not really anywhere else I could, and I’m afraid I’m definitely a Zimrazagar. I’m Adunaic through and through.” Zimrazagar looked up over the top of her head at Miriel.

“There is a no shame in that,” Miriel said, smiling.

“And you are a Miriel through and through, as well—Jewel-…?”

“Jewel-daughter. Named for the first queen of the Noldor, the wise elves.”

“It suits you, the Quenya.”

She smiled. “I’m glad you think so.”

“I will call you that, if you wish. When I can”

She paused. “I do wish,” she said, like it was too much to ask.

“Miriel,” Zimrazagar said, rolling it over the tongue, the soft press of the ‘m’ and the gentle slide down through the ‘r’ and into the ‘iel.’

“Zimrazagar,” Miriel returned, almost putting on a more Adunaic accent, rolling the first ‘r’ and leaning hard into the ‘z’s and the rhythm of the ‘a’s.

They spent the rest of the night repeating each other’s names, first like a prayer of love, and then with laughter as the names ceased to have meaning and just became a tumble of sound.


	5. Seven of Swords/Eight of Swords

Word of the fleet’s return rushed to Armenolos, and the remains of the royal household hurried their way to Romenna to greet the returning fleet.

Miriel stood on the same pier that Ar-Pharazon left from, watching his boat pull in and be lashed to it, watching the flurry of activity as gangways were lowered and scribes and artists jockeyed for position.

Ar-Pharazon stood at the bow, smiling and waving, wearing crown and armour, playing the part of a proud and triumphant king.

 _His cheeks must be hurting by now,_ Miriel thought distantly.

There was someone else on the bow with him. Well, a lot of someone elses, actually, for the One Someone else stood surrounded by soldiers. Guards, she guessed. The Someone Else wasn’t chained, or restrained, and the guards gave enough space to give the appearance of not surrounding and hemming them in—but, well. It was clear they were not for this person’s protection. They were to prevent their escape.

At this distance, Miriel could not even make out what they were. They were tall, taller than most humans, and almost shone—but she had never seen an elf, not in person, so she couldn’t be sure that’s what they looked like.

The ship pulled into the pier with a hollow clunk, and a gangway was swung into position.

Ar-Pharazon stepped onto it, and stode off the ship, followed closely by the guards and the Someone.

Closer up--they might have been an elf. But she had expected elves to look more… distinct. This person was fair and regal, as elves were said to be—but their ears were covered with hair, and their face looked like that of a man. A handsome one, no doubt—but a man. Any elven features they had were muted. As were their mannish ones, like they weren’t trying too hard one way or the other to be human or elf.

And even so, why would Ar-Pharazon bring an elf? It seemed unlikely that he had somehow coerced Gil-Galad across the sea, he had no reason to.

They dressed finely, in rich robes of royalty of a nation she did not quite recognise. They resembled the robes of some of the delegates from Harad, but these had different embroidered designs, and they used satin stitch instead of cross-stitch. The robes were an inky, unsplit, black, with fine silver threads of embroidery.

Ar-Pharazon’s smile was fake.

This person’s smile was _greasy_.

And she had a guess who this might be. Her stomach fell. She hoped she was wrong.

Ar-Pharazon walked towards her, arms out stretched and gave her a perfunctory kiss.

She returned it, distracted.

Ar-Pharazon stepped to the side, to speak with Todaphel.

She looked at them, both to get their attention and to try and read who they were. They were only so many people Ar-Pharazon could have brought with him--“And you are?” Miriel asked.

He bowed, deep and formal and dance-like. “Sauron, my dear lady.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You are actually calling yourself that?” Few people in Númenor knew the Quenya, but still. Why would one call themselves that?

The smile got wider, more lopsided, and somehow like the negative image of an oil spill. “We don’t always get to pick our names, do we?”

“I imagine you had plenty of opportunity to pick.”

“There are things,” he said, slowly, looking straight at her. “To be said for recogniseability.” There was a lupine edge to his smile, canines a little too long for a human mouth. He may have discarded the name and role of Lord of Werewolves, but she knew he remembered it well.

She stood straight backed, with an impassive expression, and ignored the attempt at intimidation (or drawing her into his confidence, or whatever it was that he was trying.) “And your purpose in Númenor?”

“To ensures smooth vassal-lord relations,” he said, equally straight backed and impassive, mirroring her. “Simple diplomacy.”

If he was going to mirror her, she was more than happy to oblige. She smiled a little too wide—not anything that looked like she was _deliberately_ showing her teeth, while still in reality achieve the affect. “Well, I hope the diplomacy goes smoothly,” she said. “And I hope you enjoy your stay in Númenor.”

“I hope I shall, Queen Ar-Zimraphel.”

* * *

Zimrazagar retrieved lunch for Miriel and herself from the kitchens.

As she carried a steaming dumpling steamer, she passed by their ‘esteemed guest.’

He ran a finger along the mortar of a window ledge. He didn’t look how she expected him to look. She’d heard that Maia chose their form, and she had expected something a bit more—threatening. He looked unearthily beautiful and refined, but he also looked like a well placed kick to the stomach would have him on the floor like anyone else. It could have been a misdirection, or maybe on some level he _had_ to look like that.

Zimrazagar couldn’t quite read it. He didn’t look like a general. He didn’t look like the Lord of Barad-Dûr, and conqueror of the goddamned absurdly tough to break fort on Knotty Hill.

He looked like a distracted architect with a thing for the construction of window ledges.

He turned to face her, and deliberately switched from abstracted interest to a shiny baby-kissing political smile. “You must be Ar-Zimraphel’s guard, yes? I remember your face from the docks.”

She wanted to ask ‘why do you ask?’ but he was a guest, at least in theory, and she should be polite. “Yes.”

“I was wondering if you could ask her, on my behalf, how things are going?”

She frowned. “Do you want me to report to you her reply, sir?”

He waved a hand. “Oh, no, it is just a courtesy thing. I wouldn’t want to take you away from your duties chasing me down around the palace.”

“I will report your concern about her welfare to her.” She made to turn away, but Sauron took a step closer.

“And I feel it would be quite impolite of me not to ask this while I am sending you off: How are things goings with you?”

The frown deepened. What did he want from her? “There is nothing to report, sir.”

“Zimrazagar— is Zimrazagar correct? Good—I am asking after how you personally feel, not asking if the palace is currently on fire.”

“I am quite well, sir. Why do you ask?” And, okay, it was rude to ask, but this was odd, and she could probably pull rank, on account of the fact that she _had_ a rank. So she was going to.

“Oh, I’m just a—what’s the word? A busy body. A micromanager. And bored. There is really only so many eras of window design you can find, and human emotions are much more interesting that windows, don’t you say.”

“That’s—certainly a way to put it.”

He waved a hand. “I may not be phrasing myself well. People are more interesting than windows. And you can tell a lot about a kingdom by their little people, their servants, and how they feel. But I really shouldn’t keep delaying you, your food will get cold.”

“I will also inform Ar-Zimraphel that you also asked after my welfare.” She turned around and left.

She arrived at Miriel’s rooms, put the steamer on a table with a wooden thunk.

Zimrazagar grabbed a dumpling a took a bite out of it, officially to taste test it, practically because she was hungry. “Sauron asked after your welfare and mine—or sends his regards, or whatever. Also, apparently he finds windows boring.”

Miriel raised an eyebrow.

“I ran into him in the corridors. He’s—chatty, let’s say. Nosy, too.”

Miriel sipped her tea. “While I can only hope that he is sticking his nose into things in a way that will benefit all—I can not be confident of that. He could be trying to ingratiate himself.”

Zimrazagar took another bite. “Of course he is. That’s what hostages _do_. They make sure you like and trust them, so you’ll let them go.”

“I worry he may be aiming… higher than that.”

Zimrazagar shrugged. “We’ll have to see.”

“If you can—and I realise you have limited power to say no to him—do not tell him anything about me that you can avoid telling. And I would advise avoiding speaking too much of yourself. I may just be—paranoid, let’s say, right now. But it is easier to speak a thing later, than unspeak a thing said earlier.”

“I will be discreet as possible,” she said, ignoring all her past indiscretions.

Miriel nodded. “Thank you.”

* * *

Niluben ran across Zimrazagar in a corridor.

“Just came back from reporting a predicted star iron fall,” he said. “Do you mind if I ask you, hmm, an odd question?” he asked.

Zimrazagar smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Sure. Can’t promise to answer it, but I don’t mind you asking.”

“You’re probably the person I know who—knows Ar-Pharazon best, knows how he thinks.”

Zimrazagar shrugged. “Miriel is his wife, I just work for him. She’d probably know better.” …though on second thoughts she may have shared more words with him than Miriel had, which was a concerning thought.

“You’re both military, and while you’re aren’t now, you have been—”

She was about to answer ‘loyal to the king?’, but well, that was still technically true, wasn’t it? She was still loyal to him, as the head of state, even if not as someone she would want to have a drink with. “Not always Faithful?” she lied.

He looked sheepish. “Yes. I just want to know—why did he bring Sauron here?”

“As a hostage. As surety.”

“But you’re bringing Sauron into the middle of the kingdom.”

“Where, if he tries shit,” she explained, “He’ll get stamped down hard and quick, unlike if he stayed in Middle Earth.”

“That does, however, assume that Sauron is only dangerous physically, and not as a political force.”

She shrugged. “Maybe he is. Maybe he isn’t. I don’t know. I just know the king’s logic.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “If you’re worried, there’s a good chance he won’t be here forever. Once the King is confident in his loyalty, he might just get swapped with a general, or someone else valuable to Sauron.”

“I am not sure it would be in Sauron’s interests for him to leave. He might make efforts to stay here.”

“If he manages to convince Ar-Pharazon to let him stay without looking like an unstable threat, I will be impressed.” If Sauron looked loyal, he would be sent away. If he looked disloyal—then Ar-Pharazon would treat him as such. Hard to manipulate a government when the government doesn’t trust you.

Niluben pressed his mouth into a thin line. “I hope so.”

* * *

Sauron kept running into Zimrazagar in the corridors. Kept asking after Miriel, but also asking after herself. How did she feel about this development, that development? It was offputting, but there was little she could do to stop him.

(One afternoon, he put his hand on her arm, and tried to shuffle her into a secluded nook in a corridor.

Her hand went to the hilt of her sword. She didn’t draw—he was a hostage, and she wouldn’t hurt him unless she knew that he was about to harm someone, she wasn’t going to try and blow the political situation up in her own face. And also, if half of what she’d heard about Sauron was true, stabbing him wouldn’t achieve much.

“Your King told me what you actually do, other than guarding,” he said, softly. “You’ve done quite an admirable job, I’d say, being undercover so long.”

She stared at him, gripping the hilt tight. “Thank you, sir.”

“What do you think of the followers of Eru?”

“They’re misguided. And not necessarily—dangerous, in my opinion. They are slowing down the work of ending death, certainly, but slowing it by not putting their hands to the turn-crank, not by actively trying to bring it to a halt.”

He nodded. “That’s interesting.”

She grit her teeth. “Is there something you want?”

He let go of her, and patted her on the shoulder. “Just that.” He smiled. “I’ll let you go back to your work.”)

He didn’t speak to Miriel. He seemed to have decided that after his bad first impression, he wasn’t going to try.

Which was strange, because the first impression he made to king was certainly worse, but he spent much time in conversation with him, as far as Zimrazagar could tell. Whenever she made a report directly to Ar-Pharazon, Sauron was always there. He was there half the time when she reported to Todaphel, too.

Maybe he gravitated to those with power. Which was a depressing thought, if Todaphel was more powerful than the Queen.

But he kept in gentle, regular contact with Zimrazagar, and she was certainly less powerful than Miriel, even as she withdrew further and further from politics as Sauron’s influence grew.

(“I was always a symbol, a tool, more than a power in my own right,” Miriel explained, as she embroidered. “Even as regent. And my words? They are not as fine as his? I could fight and fight, and all that would happen is I would be pushed out all the faster. Better to not try.” Her stitches grew faster, her hands more tense, and she stabbed the fabric like she was picturing Sauron under her hoop.)

Maybe he was gravitating to those who were loyal to the king?

Zimrazagar did not know what to think of that.

* * *

Miriel watched the nobles file in for another royal council. She was largely decorative anyway, so she felt no guilt about indulging in some people watching.

Sauron swanned in like he owned the place. That was maybe unfair, but considering it did not show on her face, and she had no better entertainment that petty judgment of a _servant of Morgoth_ , she did not feel guilty about it. And the way he walked in, all shiny smiles and the confidence of someone who was certain he belonged—

Normally he hovered behind Ar-Pharazon, next to Todaphel. That was his place. He was a guest, and no matter how esteemed, he was not a noble of Númenor.

But today, he sat in a chair. Amandil’s chair, specifically. He sat like he belonged in that chair.

Miriel held back an unkind remark on his social misstep. It was a major misstep, but she had no kind way to say it. And he probably did not realise the import of stealing someone’s chair—no, he did. He’d managed to not break that more for several months, it would be bizarre if he did not know. No, he would be playing on the belief that maybe he did not know.

Still, she would not say anything. It would not reflect kindly on her, and Amandil could deal with it with more tact. It was his chair, after all.

The meeting started, and Amandil had not arrived. Miriel suppressed a frown. Maybe he was just ill—oh, and too wish an old man was ill! But it was the least concerning explanation she could think of for his absence.

She read the agenda, using it as a marker for how far the meeting progressed. Sauron was to speak, but the description on the agenda was cryptic. ‘Religious matters’, and she somehow could not picture how that would come up in the council of an atheist nation.

“Tar-Mairon,” Ar-Pharazon said. “Your issue.”

Miriel frowned in earnest. King… Excellent? In Quenya? There was no such person listed on the agenda, and she knew everyone here by name. There was no one here who had that name.

Sauron stood up smoothly. “Yes, my king.”

White hot fury coursed through Miriel. _No._ Sauron was no king. Should not be called a king on these shores. Oh, Ar-Pharazon would not count it, if he was a ‘Tar’ and not an ‘Ar’ but he had no _right_ —

(She would not admit to jealousy, not in the most guarded reaches of her heart. But she had been forced into the shape of Ar-Zimraphel for so long, called by that name, and now Sauron had a _choice_ , and he had been _allowed to chose Quenya_ \--)

“It has been decided to close off the Meneltarma,” Sauron said, addressing the council, not the king, in another breach of protocol. “It is only used by the Faithful, and allowing their presence there to continue would only encourage them, which would certainly lead to future problems. Best to nip the problem—if not in the bud, then as soon as possible.”

Zimrazagar hissed beside her, a sharp involuntary intake of breath.

Miriel wished she had that luxury. She stayed silent, as the Holy Mountain was closed off. She should have said somethings—but what could she say, that did not out her as Faithful? What could she do, in the face of a renamed Sauron?

* * *

The air was thick and heavy in Abrazan’s kiln room, both with the heat and dust, but with the tension that hung over the Faithful that met there.

Sauron’s growing prominence—it had caused concern. Anxiety. Worry. However you put it, the Faithful were not a relaxed group at the moment. Miriel had tried to pour oil over the troubled waters of the Faithful, but it was not her strongest skill set. She did quiet dignity, not comfort.

Isilnuro had better success at his attempts to comfort them.

They all sat around in a circle, on pallets of clay, quiet and tense, waiting for someone to speak first.

Isilnuro opened his mouth to speak, presumably with some platitude about how it was all brave and important of them to come here, and he was thankful for that, but Amandil cut him off.

He looked healthy and well, too, which shouldn’t have been worrying, but Miriel remembered the council “I have something to ask of you all. Something that is between advice and favour.” He spoke deep and slow, with the timbre of a great lithophone tolling a sombre melody. “Sauron has grown in power, beyond what would be expected of a well-loved hostage. And I have been removed from the council, and he has been placed in my stead.”

Miriel swallowed tightly. That explained it. She had hoped it was not that—but it explained the chair.

“I do not think things are safe. Not for us,” Amandil continued. “It might seem fretful, to read doom into something so minor—but the King knows I am an elf friend.”

Zimrazagar went tight and pale beside her, hands clasping into fists for a moment before relaxing.

“He found it out, in our youths. And in those early days, it was no concern. But now—” He shook his head. “You have seen what’s been happening, as well as I have. It has been getting worse.=. It is going to _get_ worse. Call it gut instinct, or an old man’s paranoia—but it will not be safe to be an elf friend in the capital soon.” He paused, waiting for what he had said to sink in, before dealing the final blow of his speech. “I suggest to anyone who can: move to Romenna, with all haste.”

“Because you are lord of it?” Zimrazagar asked.

He shook his head. “I wish that were the reason. It is a pleasant reason.” His voice went dark, darker and deeper than it had been before. “I don’t want to be further than a mad run away from a boat.”

“You think it may become bad enough, to run to Middle Earth?” Miriel asked. Middle Earth was Middle Earth, and Númenor Númenor. For Middle Earth to be safer—the situation would have to be grave. Not impossibly grave, but grave nonetheless.

“Where the elves are, and Sauron is not? It is already bad enough, by some lights.”

Miriel nodded tightly. “I would follow you,” she said , leaving the ‘but I cannot’ unvoiced.

Amandil noticed. “Why not? You are Queen.”

“And my husband: king. I fear he would follow. And his new advisor, also.”

Amandil nodded. “You know Pharazon as a husband better than I do. If that is a risk—I thank you for your sacrifice, allowing others to escape in your stead.”

“There is no need for thanks—it is the right thing to do.” _The only thing I can do._ Maybe Ar-Pharazon would let her leave, there was certainly little affection between them—but fear of the Faithful, and of her escaping his sight, may be stronger than that. She could not risk it.

Zimrazagar laid a hand on hers. “And I have to stay. If she stays, I cannot leave her.”

Miriel murmured to her. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” she said, just as softly.

The meet dissolved into people discussed their plans to leave, how quickly and how, how would they feed their families, how they would cover it from their families.

Isilnuro stayed conspicuously silent.

Amandil noticed. “Isilnuro?”

“I won’t leave. My job is the telescope, and that can’t move and—all the Faithful can’t run away, that would not be right. Someone has to stay near the Meneltarma.”

“You can’t go up it,” Zimrazagar said. “There’s no point staying to do so.”

“I can’t go up it _legally_.”

Zimrazagar frowned. “Don’t be a hero.”

“I agree. Don’t,” said Amandil.

“Says the war heroes,” Isilnuro said.

“I appreciate the need to keep the traditions,” Miriel said. “But—be careful. I don’t want you getting hurt.” Telling him no would get his back up, but maybe something gentler would persuade him. The telescope notwithstanding, he could leave and be safe—and he was already in danger.

“I either hurt keeping with traditions, or breaking them. Someone has to try.”

* * *

Zimrazagar wrote her report.

 _“Faithful have been urged by Amandil to ~~escape”~~ _She crossed it out with thick, scribbly lines, completely blacking it out. She did not want to sound too sympathetic to them (no matter how unfortunately true that was.) _“move to Romenna. Amandil knows that the government knows him as an elf friend._

_~~Miriel~~ Ar-Zimraphel intends to stay, as does the astronomer Niluben, known in Faithful circles as Isilnuro._

_Niluben expressed a desire to interact(?) with the Meneltarma, despite the illegality of the act._

_-Zimrazagar, Guard to Ar-Zimraphel”_

* * *

A few days later, she was called on to report in person. To the King. She steeled herself for it. Maybe it was a commendation. Maybe it was not. (Either would stick in her craw.)

Ar-Pharazon sat, flanked by Sauron and Todaphel, both standing.

Sauron spoke. “We need you to follow the Faithful to Romenna.”

“I cannot, sir.”

He frowned. It was a gentle frown, the mild confusion of a teacher towards a student refusing a lesson they already knew. “Why not?”

“I told them I intended to stay with Miriel. If I move to Romenna, and contradict that statement, I risk blowing my cover. And as Miriel intends to stay in Armenelos, and my primary mission is to report on her, to leave would make me unable to fulfil that duty. Sir.”

Sauron spoke slowly and lowly. “Your goal has changed, Zimra—”

Ar-Pharazon cut him off with a wave of his hand. “I do think you would best serve by remaining here. You have gotten closer to Ar-Zimraphel than anyone else.”

“Excluding yourself, sir,” she said. Maybe she shouldn’t be so pointed, should let the king maintain his own dignity—but _really_.

“Excluding myself,” he echoed. “Thank you for the thoroughness of your report. You are dismissed.”

She saluted, and left.

Her guts twisted on themselves. She was lying to everyone. Lying to Miriel about staying out of duty, lying to Ar-Pharazon about the same. She would follow Miriel wherever she would go, up to the doors of death itself. That’s why she stayed.

(She would have to think about crossing those doors. Though it would give her an unprecedented chance to yell at Eru about the whole death-but-its-purpose-is-a-mystery thing. What were you thinking Eru? _Were_ you thinking?)

She lied about her loyalties. To the Faithful, the Kingdom, to the King. She lied so much, she was no longer sure of the truth. If she ever was. She was loyal to—all of them? But one could not be loyal to three opposed masters. And she wasn’t loyal to any of them, really, considering the lies. One did not lie to those you were bound to.

But she was not loyal to herself. She would lay down her life for any of them, given good enough reason. And wasn’t willing self-immolation (destruction of the self, one’s existence, in fire real or metaphorical) the greatest loyalty?

She popped her head into the door of Miriel’s rooms, and excused herself to go train.

At least with swords, lying was called ‘feinting’, and was usually to your tactical advantage.


	6. The Tower/Justice

Zimrazagar looked out one of Miriel’s windows, watching the construction of the Thing in the middle of the city.

It wasn’t clear what the Thing was, yet. Definitely a building. Definitely large, expensive, and trying to be built in record time. But other than that it was a mystery. Need-to-know basis, and she didn’t need to know anything about it, apparently.

Miriel didn’t need to know either, as far as she could tell.

She wondered, idly, if the builders had any better idea.

* * *

A messenger knocked at the door to Miriel’s rooms.

Zimrazagar answered.

“Tar-Mairon wishes your presence,” he said. To Zimrazagar. Specifically.

There was no way this could end well, but what could she do? Say no to the King’s right hand?

Miriel stood up from her couch, and placed a hand on her shoulder. “I do not trust him. And I certainly do not trust him with you,” she said, sotto voce.

“He probably just wants to know something about Knotty Hill, or some such,” she said, with false confidence. _Or know more about the Faithful._ “I’ll—I’ll be careful.”

“Stay safe, if you can.”

She followed the messenger, as he led her to the room Sauron had taken to be his office.

He bowed, and left, not even opening the door for her.

She didn’t pay it much mind, and pushed the door open.

The room was dark, unnaturally so. The room should have had windows, it was on the outside of the palace, but she could not see any of them, not even a tell-tale trickle of light at the edge of a piece of fabric.

The only light was the light coming through the door, and a mostly burned candle sat in front of It cast flickering shadows over his face, that made him even more unreadable than usual, and turned his marble features into something fiery and threating.

She stepped in.

Sauron motioned for her to close the door behind her, the wave of his hand threatening to blow out the candle.

“Zimrazagar,” Sauron asked, with an owl-like expression, watching her closely. “Are you afraid of the dark?”

Zimrazagar did not know what answer he wanted. She didn’t even quite know the truth. She had been spooked as a child by the dark, but she thought she had grown out of it. She had never been scared on night patrols, even on moonless nights—or at least, not afraid of the dark itself. Afraid of what it could conceal, maybe. But it was no more a source of fear than fog, or bright sun.

But here, in this small room, with just a flickering candle and Sauron and everything else walls of inky blackness? She was, maybe, afraid. “No.”

Sauron smiled, and blew out the candle.

Zimrazagar blinked, in the vain and hopeless attempt to be able to see.

All she could see was black. No, darker than black. And absence of light so complete that to describe it as a colour would be to fit it into a category it could never belong to. Sauron could be right in front of her face and she wouldn’t know. Her hand went to her sword hilt, without her will or volition.

“Do you know what the darkness comes from?” he asked.

“Lack of light?” she said, with false lightness.

Sauron chuckled. “True enough, in a physical sense. But on a metaphysical--?” His voice came from somewhere different from before. How could he move so silently

Zimrazagar spun in place, trying to follow, track, _find_ him, but with no luck. “I’m a soldier, sir, not a philosopher. I don’t do metaphysics.”

“Go on, hazard a guess.”

 _Eru_ would be the answer she would give, if Miriel was asking, but she doubted that was the answer that Sauron wanted. “I really wouldn’t know.”

“I understand,” he sighed. “It is unfortunately not common knowledge. Not yet. I am trying to change that, but it is slow going. Do you know who the Lord of Darkness is?”

“I assume he makes darkness,” she said, deadpan. 

“True, true, but he makes all. Not just you, or me, or the world, but all the higher level things. Ambition. Power. Glory. Duty. _Loyalty_. He is the master of masters and the master of vassals, lord of the conquered and the conquering. Do you not know his name?”

She set her jaw, and stood her ground. If he wanted to unsettle her—well, he had succeeded, but she wasn’t going to make it easy. She wasn’t going to make it obvious. “No.”

“ _Melkor_.”

“That’s—not what I’ve heard about him, sir.”

She could actually hear his footsteps now, as he paced around her. It wasn’t comforting, not like she would have hoped. “From who? The Faithful? Do you trust them, Zimrazagar?”

“I trust they believe what they believe. Whether it’s true or not is not my place. Again—I don’t do metaphysics.”

He laughed. “But you do ideals! The distinction you Men draw between the two—is _fascinating_. Like the line between physics and math and music.” He sighed. “I can’t blame the Faithful for believing for what they believe. They have been fooled, but not necessarily foolish. It’s useful for the Valar to have—a figurehead. A little invisible creator puppet that dances to your tune and says what you want it to say.”

 _You sound like you would find a little creator puppet useful,_ she thought, but did not say. Best not to antagonise the powerful entity while you were blinded. Best not to antagonise them at all.

“But Melkor? Melkor is visible. You have already seen Melkor’s works.”

She tensed. Had he read her mind, and tried to find a weakness in her doubt? No, it had to be part of his little spiel. (But could she be sure?)

“You have followed your lord into battle, risked and brought death at his command. Is that not the Lord of Darkness’ work?”

He paused, waiting for a response she did not give. “And here, you can see him. He is here, in the darkness.”

Zimrazagar froze at the thought, of something so powerful in the room with her, watching her, defenceless.

It took her a minute for her mind to realise the foolishness of the idea of Melkor somehow fitting into that room, let along being there. It took her another minute to realise that Sauron had somehow left already, silent and with no light from the door or windows. It took her another minute to grope for and find the door.

She ran for Miriel’s rooms, like a spooked horse let off the lead rope into a field. She wasn’t running _from_ anything, but she had to run. Her brain gave her no other option

She entered Miriel’s rooms, panting and sweating.

Miriel put down her embroidery, and came up to her. “Are you alright?”

She sat down heavily on a couch, waving a dismissive hand. “I think Sauron just wanted to be creepy. It worked. Unfortunately.”

Miriel sat down opposite her. “Are you hurt?”

“No, no, just spooked.” _And now afraid of the dark._

* * *

The day of the Eruhantale came, and entry to the Meneltarma was forbidden, by order of the King, on pain of death.

Miriel stared out the window at the empty mountain, rubbing embroidery thread between her fingers. She had meant to distract herself—but. Well.

Zimrazagar tried to comfort her. Sat next to her, put a hand on her shoulder, spoke soothingly.

She appreciated the attempt, even if it did not succeed. The Eruhantale must happen—not due to fear of punishment if it was not fulfilled, but because of duty.

Zimrazagar understood duty. But she did not understand this duty. “I am sure Eru will understand,” she said.

Miriel nodded. Eru was aware of their petty human faults, and by his nature understood them—in the sense of knowing why they happened, not necessarily out of sympathy.

But the duty lay there, unfulfilled.

On the afternoon of the Eruhantale, Ar-Pharazon held a festival in the capital, on the steps of the half built temple. The steps towered above the crowd, dark gabbro polished to a glassy mirror shine. The scaffolds loomed above them, looking more like columns of a great tower than structural support for workers to stand on.

Sauron stood at his side by Ar-Pharazon’s side, dressed in the same dark robes as he had worn when he first arrived.

Ar-Pharazon spoke, and dedicated the festival to Melkor.

Miriel stood there, silent. What could she do? Stop the festival? She laughed inwardly. How? She was just a Queen, and a figurehead one at that.

Run up to the Meneltarma? And die?

…She did not fear death. But she did not long for it, either. That was what she told herself, as her stomach gripped with ice.

She scanned the crowds.

Of course they would be horrified at their King’s words, even if they did not understand who Melkor or Eru or the Valar were. They would feel the terror and revulsion on some gut level, animal instinct recoiling at the thought. At worst, they would listen politely, as their King slipped into madness and pride.

…

No.

They celebrated. Not forced cheer, the ‘the king is celebrating and we must celebrate with him’—she recognised that. Recognised that from standing next to her father. No, this was real interest and curiousity, the right mix of fear and desire for salvation, slowing being carved into fervour.

Acid burned at the back of her throat, as she watched silently.

* * *

Zimrazagar walked past Todaphel’s desk, carrying a tray of a cream buns.

“Good catch,” Todapehel said.

Zimrazaga turned on her heel, startled.

“About Niluben,” Todaphel added. “He was caught trying to slip passed the guards to climb the Meneltarma. But we had kept an eye on him, due to your reports.”

“Oh,” she said, not quite sure what to say. To climb the Meneltarma was to die. Niluben would be killed…

…and it would be her fault.

 _But he climbed the mountain!_ One part of her said. _There would have been guards, anyway! They would have spotted him, even if they did not know of him. He did it of his own free will! He knew the risks!_

But Todaphel had said that they had been watching him, because of her. Because she was their spy for the Faithful, and they acted on her reports.

She should not have sympathy for them—and yet. Had to be around people that long and not grow to care at least a little bit. “That’s good,” she hazarded, hoping that Todaphel did not spot the crisis of conscience.

Todaphel turned back to her writing. “Keep up the good work.”

“Will do.” She walked away calmly, naturally, trying to make sure Todaphel did not spot anything amiss.

As soon as she was out of earshot, she broke into a run towards Miriel’s rooms. She slammed open the door, somehow not juggling the buns to the floor. “Have you heard?”

Miriel looked up from her embroidery with a start. “Heard what?”

“Niluben tried to climb the Meneltarma.”

* * *

“I tried to visit him,” Miriel said. She sipped her tea with agitation. “Make sure he got to see a familiar face. But apparently it would be unsafe for me to go to the prison, even with you in attendance.” She put the tea on the saucer with a clink. “I think they are convinced he could pour poison into the ear of the sternest souls, or somehow strangle them without the use of his hands.” She shook her heard. “I shouldn’t be focused on this, I should try and get him out—”

“Can you?” Zimrazagar asked.

 _I should be able to._ She dabbed at her mouth with a cloth. “They have not executed him yet. That is a good sign. Maybe they are thinking about letting him off with a warning, or a lesser punishment—” _Or maybe they are waiting for something else to happen first._ It didn’t matter. She should be able to do this. If marching down and insisting he be let out right now, he was only doing his religious duty, burned up her last scrap of good will, it would be worth it.

Or would it burn up her last scrap, with no guarantee he would get out? Or would she be thrown down there with him? What if her intervention sealed his fate? Or—

Maybe they would let him out. Maybe sans a hand, and with no job—and to think of that being the good outcome! But he would live for the span of his natural life. And that would be enough.

Zimrazagar finally picked up her own teacup. “Has his family been allowed to visit, at least?”

Miriel pressed her mouth to a thin line. “I do not know. I do not know if they would even try.”

Zimrazagar frowned. “Did they—not know?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how they could not know, knowing Isilnuro—but it is possible.”

Zimrazagar sipped her tea. “I’ll try and see him. I can’t promise to succeed, but I’ll try.”

Miriel nodded. “Thank you.”

* * *

_To: Zimrazagar Azraindil_

_No._

  1. _It will not help your cover_
  2. _You may break your cover_
  3. _It would contravene current orders to not meet with the guilty party_
  4. _No_



_To reiterate: No._

_Regards,_

_Todaphel_

* * *

An alarm sounded. Three high tones, nearly at the top of the range of a bugle player. A general alarm. All hands who can hold a sword: go get out there.

Zimrazagar waved a brief goodbye to Miriel as she ran out.

Another guard sprinted down the corridor.

Zimrazagar ran to catch up with them. “Where is it?”

We’re about to find out!”

They ran together, down stairs, through corridors, before running into another pack of guards.

“Where?” Zimrazagar called out.

“The courtyard of Nimloth!”

What would anyone want with the courtyard? Other than Nimloth, but that was a whole tree, you couldn’t steal a tree—and it was a closed off courtyard.

…A courtyard important to the Faithful. If Niluben had broken out—No, he couldn’t have. It had to be someone else.

That was worse. Another Faithful death on her conscience. Maybe not, maybe they were running around there for a different reason

The pack of guards almost crashed into the gates of the courtyard.

A robed figure fumbled something into the folds of his robe, trying to hide it. What was it? Something shiny, and round--

A fruit. A fruit of Nimloth. She’d seen one in earlier days, when Miriel walked the courtyard freely.

So they were trying to steal a tree.

The figure stopped, and looked at the guards. She couldn’t see their face, couldn’t see who they were—but she could tell they were thinking. Thinking how to get out of this. They were boxed in, and they had a sword, but that was not enough against this many--

In a flash, they ran full tilt towards the guards, their sword glinting in the moonlight as they unsheathed it.

The guards drew their swords as one.

Even Zimrazagar. She did not want to draw swords against the Faithful—but when someone was running at you with a sword, those sorts of things took the lower priority.

She did not want to be hung for desertion. She also did not want to be stabbed by a crazy guy with a fruit, bleed out, and die.

The fruit stealer leaned down, and tried to duck under the legs of the guards.

One of the guards tripped them, brought them to the floor. Brought their sword down on them too.

They tried to roll out of the way. Failed. Got struck across the shoulder. Blood flowed out, almost black in the moonlight. They struggled to their feet, and ran again.

Zimrazagar could barely see them, they were deep in the press of the guards.

Swords swung and flashed, and she could not keep track of whose they were.

Someone fell with a thump. By their breastplate, a guard.

The figure managed to break through the press of guards, bleeding and wounded and only running on adrenaline. They’d crash hard as soon as they stopped, Zimrazagar guessed.

They jumped through a window.

The pack of guards crashed into it, the mass of people too large to fit through. By the time they managed to turn themselves around, and find a door, the figure had fled into the night.

* * *

Miriel watched the melee in the courtyard, unsure of whose side she should be on.

It really depended on what they wanted the fruit for.

The fruit bearer fled, and Miriel ran to the other side of the corridor, to try and follow their progress.

They jumped out a window, rolling on impact. Their hood fell away from their face.

It was Amandil’s grandson.

Isildur.

They ran out into the night, bleeding heavily.

Miriel hoped he would live. But she did not believe he would.

* * *

_Dear ~~Miriel~~ Ar-Zimraphel,_

_I hope this letter finds you ~~well~~ safe. I hope I have not impositioned you in anyway by sending it. _

_A fruit of Nimloth has been saved._

_Isildur is gravely injured. He may recover, in time, but I am… not confident. Please keep him in your prayers, if you can._

_I am concerned about the temple construction. I am concerned about the people’s reaction, from the description in your previous letter._

_I hope things improve._

_I fear they well not._

_Stay Safe,_

_Amandil_

* * *

The temple was mostly complete, except for the roof. Workers scrambled all over it, laying silver leaf, and other sealing the leaf from the elements.

Zimrazagar watched the process, sipping tea. She should probably—feel something, about this process. About the giant temple in the middle of the capital, and weren’t the king’s men meant to be atheists? And if we had to pick a god, did we have to pick one with the history Melkor had?

But she didn’t have much feelings about it, not yet, not now.

She sipped the tea, and realised something something. She huffed out a laugh. “Oh, my old boss is going to be _pissed_.”

Miriel looked up from her embroidery, eyebrow raised.

“You know the company I used to work for, as a guard? The founder had two sons, so he split the company into half. The eldest got the gold business, younger got silver. I worked with the gold side. It was arranged like that, so the eldest got the biggest and richest share, but—” The pointed her cup in the direction of the temple. “I bet the price of silver has gone through the roof. The younger one is going to be a very rich man. And my old boss? Oh, I bet he’s fuming right now.”

“There are—most likely—more important things than the price of precious metals.”

“I know. But the price? You can look at it. I doubt the temple will do much good, but if it makes my old boss unhappy—” She turned over her shoulder to Miriel, and gave her a lopsided, joking smile. “I’ll take what I can get.”

* * *

The Palace was large. Miriel’s rooms where a fair distance from the courtyard containing Nimloth.

But even so, the _thud-thud-thud_ of the woodsman’s axe as it chopped the tree down rang loud and clear.

Zimrazagar closed the window, in a vain attempt to muffle the noise.

It became quieter, but the bass still rang proud.

Miriel sat on a couch, pointedly facing away from the window, crying quietly. She always cried quietly, dripping tears down her face but no shaking shoulders or cut off yelps and screams.

Zimrazagar sighed, and sat next to her. She didn’t really know how to comfort her. Firstly, for Miriel to show any sorrow—it had to be _bad_. Beyond what Zimrazagar could soothe. And there was always a gulf between them, with this sort of sadness. Zimrazagar could tell why Miriel was sad, but she missed the deeper why. She knew that Nimloth was important. She could tell you that it was a symbol of friendship between Men and Elves, and believed to hold ties to the Númenorean royal family, that while it stood, the line of Elros Tar-Minyatur would still stand strong.

She knew that.

But she didn’t _know_ that.

She put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said, because that was rarely the wrong thing to stay.

Tear drops stained and darkened the undyed linen that Miriel was embroidering. The design had started as deer and horses rising rampant, but the white thread for the deer’s spots had been repurposed to stitch meandering, chaotic, twisted white trees.

“It’s not your fault,” Miriel said.

 _That’s debatable,_ Zimrazagar thought. How much had she contributed to the guard being put around the tree, how much to the slow poisoning of good will toward the Faithful? Ar-Pharazon and Sauron should have the greatest portion of the blame for the felling of Nimloth, certainly, but she certainly had a small, but uncomfortable percentage. “I know, but. I’m sorry that it’s happening.” She rested her head on Miriel’s shoulder. “I’m sorry I could not stop it for you.”

“There is only so much one can do,” she said, sewing another tortured branch. “There’s only so much I can ask.”

The thudding stopped. The silent void left by it was like feeling someone’s hearbeat stop, the sickening knowledge that with that sound stopped, they were certainly dead.

Miriel made a sound, somewhere between a gasp and cry.

Zimrazagar sat up, and gathered her into her arms. “I’m sorry,” she repeated.

Miriel twitched and shivered in her arms for a second, before stilling. “It’s not even the tree,” she said into Zimrazagar’s collar bone. “Not really. My father had worked so hard to keep it, and—” She cut off again.

“When the dead’s works fail—” Zimrazagar paused, trying to marshal her words into something articulate and convincing. “The living feel a responsibility for the dead’s works,” she said, slowly. “Even if they had no ability to go with that responsibility. When we cannot protect the works of the dead—”

“I know. I know.” Miriel peeled herself out of Zimrazagar’s embrace. “—It’s good to hear someone else say it. This is not the first time. I may not have been—the best steward, of my father’s works.”

“You did what you could.”

“Did I?”

“From how it looks where I’m standing: yes.”

Miriel stared at her silently, like she couldn’t puzzle it out, before returning in equal silence, to the twisted and fallen white trees on her cream cloth.

* * *

The Temple was completed.

The shining dome was polished to a blinding shine, the walls washed of the last of the construction dust, the scaffolding carried away.

The Temple was to be consecrated. By the King and Queen.

* * *

Miriel walked with dignity. She had learned to walk with dignity through the greatest distraction, and the greatest griefs.

Her greatest griefs were the loss of her father and mother, certainly. After that, the felling of Nimloth. But this? This—edifice, to excess and corruption and the literal worship of literal Morgoth, that she was forced to witness the consecration of? It was close. It was the next in line, quite comfortably.

The building had looked large, even from the distance of the palace windows. But up close, it loomed like an artificial mountain, with silver snow glittering on its domed peak. The walls rose high and shear, and the huge doors opened like a colossal creature’s maw.

Zimrazagar walked a step behind her, her breastplate and scabbard glittering almost as much as the roof.

She and Ar-Pharazon wore the highest of the royal finery, with the sceptre at Ar-Pharazon’s hip and the finest crown, the one inset with large diamonds and sapphires, that weighed as much as a baby, on top of his head.

She wore the head-dress of a queen, gold and silver chain laid over her hair, with oval garnets hanging down like a waterfall or like the tears of a grieving widow. Her dress was the finest silk, woven spun so fine the fabric could be drawn through a ring, with dyes of purple and red and black, chasing each other in intricate blocks, with subtle sparks of gold thread highlighting and shifting with the pattern. It was the same dress she had worn to her coronation and wedding.

Sauron walked in front of them, dressed, presumably, as a priest of Morgoth.

When she had first met him, he had worn the robes of a foreign noble. Finely crafted, but not beyond what could be expected. Expensive, but not ludicrous. As a captive, his finery increased as his star rose in Ar-Pharazon’s eyes, but still remained within reason.

But this? This was beyond reason. He wore a fine black robe, made of many layers of thin, translucent cloth, covered in elaborate gold embroidery, with real gold thread. The stitches were tiny, even the space filling ones. The gold and cloth alone would have made a high ranking lord’s ransom. But the labour put into the embroidery? That was a King’s.

She stared at his back as she walked. The more she looked at the embroidery, the less she could tell whether the pattern was abstract, or if there was something in the negative space between the gold.

(It looked almost like a snarling face, with a crown with three gems set into it—or, it could look like that because she expected it to look like that.)

Zimrazagar startled behind her, her steps halting for a second. “What--?”

“What is it?” Miriel murmured, hoping that she would catch it, but the crowd would not.

“I thought I saw Ni—No, I couldn’t have.” She shook her head, the mail around her neck shifting audibly. “It is nothing, my lady.”

They walked through the golden double doors –carved ornately in the shape of three mountains, still sparing no expense— into the cavernous Temple.

It seemed ever larger on the inside than the outside, the dark shadows within hiding and distorting its true dimensions. It was like walking into the belly of a whale, one that was malevolent and wished to see what you were made of as it digested you, cell by cell.

Tall windows, at least twice human height, were set high up into the walls, three times above human height. The stained glass was elaborately leaded and designed—but all in blacks and greys. The windows robbed half the light they let into the space, casting strange mottled shadows on the floor.

The precession continued. The Temple may be square, but it was a large square, and a long walk to the centre. Wooden seats sat in rows, creating an aisle down the centre that the precession walked down.

She could see, vaguely, further ahead, that the chairs turned from plain wooden benches to carved actual chairs, with cushions included. There was something else in the centre, that she couldn’t quite see it yet. It was bathed in light, like a spot light, from the hole in the roof.

They reached the centre, and Sauron held out his hand, to gesture them into their places. Miriel turned to face the crowd, face impassive and dignified.

And she saw it.

A square, half a metre tall, and several metres all around, made of black stone, stood in the centre. There was a little lip to hold the contents: a stacked pyramid of wood, with wide logs at the bottom, and thinner branches cut short at the top, with twiggy kindling poking out at the bottom.

It was a pyre.

That seemed—not in keeping with the rest of the aesthetic. Morgoth was the Lord of Darkness, and fire was light, the banisher of shadows, the opposite of darkness.

And the wood was so bright too, so light coloured. All the other wood, in the chairs and benches, was stained dark, but this as a pale cream. Surely, the wood in the pyre would be in keeping with the rest of the aesthetic as?

…Then she caught a glimpse of the wood’s bark.

She had not seen the heartwood of Nimloth before. How could she? But she had seen its bark before, many times. The white, soft smooth bark, that peeled off in sheets throughout the year, mulching itself.

Nimloth was the pyre.

It took great effort of will not to react to that, to that sacrilege, using Nimloth as mere kindling, using it up and destroying it—

Someone was placed in one of the front benches. Someone chained. She couldn’t see it right, the pyre was in the way, and her eyes were watering, and it was dark, it must have been a trick of the light—

As the last of the procession filed in, and took their seats, Sauron spread his arms wide. “Greetings. It is a momentous day.” He seemed electric, limned in the half spotlight if the pyre.

She had seen that effect, once before. Seen that electricity. She did not believe that Eru spoke to humans, not directly, and she still did not believe it—but seeing Niluben speak, Eru drunk and pulled taught like the string across a harp, speaking in a voice that was not his own, words that should not have meaning and yet did, speaking in Sindarin and Taliska that he had not learned—She gained doubts, that day.

“Today, you are some of the first few to see Melkor’s power.” His voice dropped, but could still carried to the end of the temple. “Not in its full glory, not yet. Melkor is not unfair. But Melkor does not give freely, either. True reward comes from true sacrifice. But Númenorean, as I have seen, are a worthy people. You do not shy away from effort. You do not shy away from sacrifice.”

His voice rose again, became rallying cry. “Look at what you have done! What you have done to fight death! To manage Middle Earth! And for what reward? Little rewards, piddling scraps of glory. But no longer. Today, you will be enlightened. You will place your sweat and tears and sacrifice to a worthy cause, a true cause, and find true reward and success.”

The crowd clapped, more enthusiastic than mere polite clapping would be. This was almost as bad as the first official ceremony, in how many people it took in with such enthusiasm.

Would Nimloth be the sacrifice? Burning away the symbol of the old, of Elf-friendship and piety to Eru and the Valar. It would be symbolically fitting.

“We will burn away the old, sacrifice that which is holding us back, and bring our glory ever closer.”

 _It will be Nimloth._ She looked away from the pyre, at the tiled floor. She had mourned for Nimloth, that life snuffed out, once before. But to do it again as it was wantonly burned, reduced to ash, to do it while a crowd watched and cheered and fell into ecstacy—

An attendant handed Sauron a brazier set on a long pole. He thrust it into the centre of the pile, where the kindling was, and lit it.

Gentle drifts of grey smoke spun out and twirled out of the pyre.

He removed the pole, and handed it back to the attendent.

The smoke reeked. It reeked of menthol and rancid wine and horse urine, and one note she couldn’t quite identify, something meaty and rotten—

Burning flesh. It smelled of burning flesh. Burning human flesh. Human flesh that had been preserved, but was still nearly a week old, being burned in a pottery kiln.

She covered her nose and mouth with a hand. It was not dignified, but expelling the day’s food onto the floor would be less dignified.

Most of the crowd were also doing it, holding their nose shut or covering it with their hand.

Sauron paid no mind.

The pyre started to crackle, but the large logs still had not quite caught yet.

“This is the wood of Nimloth, gifted by the elves. Those fools tied to the Valar, dancing loyally on their strings to whatever tune they desire. This tree—it was not what was holding us back, but it is a symbol of it. May it burn, and may the ideals of the elves and Valar burn with it. But that is not the only thing we will burn.” He held his hand out towards his attendants.

This time he was not handed a torch, but a man instead.

He was dragged up from one of the chairs by a chain looped around his wrists.

He followed weakly, having no strength to resist. He was thin and emaciated, and covered in bruises from hip to rib. His eyes were sunken and bagged, and cuts limned his feet and hands.

And he glistened. Miriel could not quite tell what by the light of the shaft of sunlight and the slowly growing fire, all she could see was how he shone and how the sun cast harsh highlights on the where his bones shone through.

It took Miriel a second to recognise the man, and a second for the knowledge in her mind to reach the knowledge of her heart.

It was Niluben. Injured and weak and wasting away, looking at least one quarter dead, but him nonetheless. His eyes did not have the fire they once had. And he did not speak. He was in a crowd of attentive listeners, and he did not speak, and that seemed the most wrong thing of them all.

“This man broke the laws of the King. He not only broke them, but he broke them to try and break the King’s authority.” He clapped Niluben on the shoulder, and Niluben flinched away and nearly toppled over. “If any man is a fitting example of the chaff that must be burned away for the field of Númenor to grow fertile, he is it. And as such, he will be the fitting and first sacrifice for the Lord of Darkness.”

The fire burned fully now, dancing over the logs, tall and bright and deadly.

Zimrazagar was tense and still beside her, hand on her sword.

Miriel froze. She had to do something, but what could she do? Throw herself on the fire?

She could not move her limbs, could not move her mouth to speak. How could she denounce this, if she had no control over her lips and tongue?

What could she do?

…

What could she have done? She searched her brain for answers, but every answer came down to ‘stop this from happening in the first place.’ Convince her husband not to trust Sauron. Convince her husband to trust her. Make him, if not believe with, understand the Faithful, at least see they were no threat.

But she could not do that know.

She knew that right now, right this very instant, there was nothing she could do.

It was too late.

It had been too late a long time ago.

Sauron shoved him backwards onto the burning pyre.

The accelerant on his skin went up in flames immediately, shooting up towards the skylight.

Niluben was many things. Intelligent, well spoken, Faithful—but he was never good with pain.

He screamed.

The noise echoed and bounced off the walls.

In some ways, it was almost worse for not being that loud.

* * *

Niluben screamed.

Sauron watched, inscrutable.

Zimrazagar stepped forward, and drew her sword, almost on instinct. If someone was to die, you could not let them suffer and die like _that_. It was wrong. As wrong as the death.

 _Sauron is trying to end death by death._ She couldn’t puzzle out the implications of that, she just knew gut deep that they were there.

But she could not puzzle them out while Niluben was there, screaming. Niluben, her friend, her comrade, screaming and burning to death and she had to do something.

And she had a sword.

It felt heavy in her hand. Her palms were slick with sweat from the heat of the fire and the screaming pain next to her.

She stepped forward, one foot at a time, to the front of the pyre. Even when one could not walk the whole way at once, just one foot at a time, just one step at a time, and you would get closer to your goal.

She reached the front of the pyre, were Niluben lay.

It was horrible. He was screaming raw meat, slowly being cooked. His skin had burned off, leaving red raw flesh, leaking blood and plasma. And his face—it wasn’t his face anymore. And yet it was. It was some horrible juxtaposition between her friends face and screaming terror and a skull.

The screaming slowed, no longer one long held note, but harsh babbling, like his throat had been burned and he was left with faint, guttural, whispering. She couldn’t understand him over the crackle of the flames. She didn’t want to understand him.

She raised her sword, slowly evaluating its position. If she did this right, one cut between the third and fourth rib, and she would hit his heart and he would feel no more pain. If she missed, she will have stabbed him and only added to his pain. She had to get this right the first time. She couldn’t dally, but she had to do this right.

She breathed in deep, and got a breath of the smoke of Nimloth and Niluben.

_Slowness begets carefulness. Carefulness begets accuracy. Accuracy begets speed._

She lined herself up, and drew her sword back to get more power.

Someone put a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

She looked up, away from Niluben’s chest—away from the screaming pile of meat—at them.

It was Sauron. “Don’t,” he said softly, gently peeling the sword out of her hands. He peeled her fingers off it, one by one, and she had no power against his grip. He spoke even softer. “It won’t work if you do that.”

One of the attendants took her by the shoulders.

She struggled, but it had been such an effort of will to just walk those ten steps to the pyre, that she did not have the strength to stop them.

They held on tighter, fingers digging into her, and dragged her back harsher.

Even if she could escape their grip, what could she do? Sauron had her sword. What could she do? Drag Niluben bodily off the pyre, fight Sauron for her sword back?

The attendant dragged her into an annex, and placed her on the floor.

The annex was dark—not as ink black as that time in Sauron’s office, but close. And it was around a corner from the pyre. She could no longer see it.

The fire crackled.

She could not hear Niluben. She hoped that it meant he had succumbed—but she did not know that.

She sunk to the floor. The adrenaline had given her something—not strength, but an ability to _do_. But with nothing to channel it towards, she slumped like one of the elf-puppets with its string cut.

The attendant watched her, to make sure she didn’t try something.

They didn’t need to.

There was nothing she could try.

* * *

Sauron came up to her. The gold of his robes had been darkened with soot and ash.

Ar-Pharazon and Miriel and the attendants followed him, like lost ducklings.

The ceremony must have finished.

(Niluben must be dead.)

Sauron looked down at her with—affection? Something along those lines. His features were serious and grave, but soft, as he looked down at her.

She couldn’t quite make out the purpose of that. She realised, belatedly, that she had tried to stop a religious ceremony—and she was right to, and she would take that belief to her grave—but there was a serious chance that her stay in a grave was coming up sooner, thanks to that.

Sauron held her sword out to her, holding the hilt out towards her. “Apologies,” he said.

Zimrazagar frowned, and laid her hand on the hilt—not taking the sword, not yet. Why was he apologising? What for?

“I should have warned you,” he continued. “It was… somewhat intense. More than you could handle. I should have warned you ahead of time.”

She wanted to say she could handle it just fine—but she didn’t, really. Who handled the deaths of their friends well? When her comrades died—well, she always got the job done. But she collapsed afterwards. And no one had ever stopped her from getting the job done before.

She was beyond words, at this point. She blinked her assent, and grabbed the hilt.

She stood up, slowly, and followed Miriel.


	7. The Hanged Man Reversed/Three of Swords

Zimrazagar sat on the bed in her own rooms. She should be in Miriel’s, she thought, comforting her—but she had no comfort to give. She was grieving, and as spiny as a porcupine in her grief. Miriel would want platitudes about how Niluben was with Eru now, and while the circumstances of his death were terrible, there was balm in Eru’s embrace.

And maybe that was true.

But she didn’t know that.

Niluben was gone. Gone from the world, gone from this existence. For all she knew, scratched off the world’s tallybook completely. Every unique experience of his existence snuffed out, and replaced with bone and ash and charcoal.

He was dead.

He was killed.

He was murdered.

Murdered in the name of ending death—and how fucked up was that? How ass backwards? To kill people to stop people from dying.

To kill them like _that_.

She punched the wall and screamed.

That shouldn’t be how this worked.

Death was bad. Death was the end of experience, of every joy and happiness in life, erased to either mystery or blank nothingness. And to—to torture people to death, to bring about Death’s end? No. They had to _have standards._ Lines they would not cross.

And Sauron and Ar-Pharazon danced over them. (Sauron more so than the King)

Maybe, by some cold tallying calculation, a little suffering, a little extra death, all worked out in the end if they were going to end completely. But only if they were _sure,_ and they weren’t.

They had replaced belief in Eru with disbelief, and had returned to belief in Melkor, and they expected that to somehow achieve more than obeiscance to Eru did.

At least Tar-Palantir only asked you to accept death, to allow it to happen and to not struggle against it. And that wasn’t good—but it was a darn sight better than hastening it and causing it in suffering! It was at least self-consistent. At least it kept the suffering of the world, the consequences of a marred Arda, constant. Didn’t increase it. Didn’t involve covering your hand in blood, and smudging it over the pattern of the world.

She punched the wall again, feeling it jar through her fist to her shoulder.

She’d never believed the Faithful. She’d been a King’s Man, through and through—because she wanted to end death. No more grandmothers passing on before she could share her one last family recipe. No more tables with gaps in them. No more people having to throw themselves in front of swords to save others, no more calculation of “But if I die, I will save the lives of two other people, and that will be worth it.”

She wanted to end death. Not kill people.

She had killed. She had killed to save others’ lives. And was that **different**.

She took a deep breath.

Every life she took saved another. Directly. She could count up the lives she saved, and take away all the lives she ended, and her tally would still be positive.

And could Sauron be so sure of that?

She had had divided loyalties, ones that she couldn’t work out how to walk the knife edge between. To be loyal between Faithful and King’s Men and the King himself? How to stay loyal to all, could she do such a thing—

That didn’t matter. Not anymore.

She had one loyalty now.

To Númenor, and the people who lived on her, and stopping them from dying. No matter why.

* * *

Miriel sat in the middle of her cold bed, and cried.

She had held herself together through the ceremony, during the court function after it, where they eat canapés and everyone pretended they did not see what they saw.

She felt strangely—naked, alone, without Zimrazagar by her side. But if she needed to retreat, that was understandable. She had taken hard. Anyone would. (Not least the sort of person who tried to solves problems with a sword.)

So she was left alone in a cold, dark room, with after images of fire behind her eyelids, and the smell of smoke soaked into her hair.

She gripped the pages of the Noldodantë, as tight as she could trust the old pages to bear. The lament of _we overreached, we disobeyed, we were exiled, we failed, we will die_ was fitting. Not comforting, but fitting. Comfort would be ill fitting right now.

Niluben died. Niluben had been murdered, murdered because he was Faithful—and she should have been able to stop it.

She didn’t know how, but she had to have been able to. She was _Queen_.

A sob racked through again.

To think she thought Nimloth would have been the worst of it.

How could she have saved him? Her mind danced through the possibilities, but always threaded back, reach asymptotically to the same conclusion: she couldn’t have saved him then. Not once he was chained and oiled and thrown into the fire. Not when he had been captured for trying to observe the Eruhantalë either.

She could have only stopped if she had done something beforehand. Stopped the closing of the Meneltarma. Stopped Sauron’s rise to power, throw all her political might at the issue, as the one thing she would stop, even if it killed her.

…actually growing and maintaining her political power, instead of letting it slip like so much sand through loose fingers.

She hadn’t tried anything to stop it, and now it was too late.

And she doubted it would finish with Niluben.

She had told herself that trying—trying politically, trying as a member of the court—would endanger her. That any exercise of what political power she had would squander it, and only increase the horde of enemies around her. And in those days after her father’s death—maybe it was true. She had to be given a bodyguard, almost a first in Númenor since the more dangerous days of Elros Tar-Minyatur—but had any assassination attempt come through? These were dark days, and Zimrazagar was apart from her, and yet she did not fear a murderer hiding in the dark. Was she ever in that much danger?

And with her father’s death—she watched him struggle and fight and toil for nothing. No achievement but making people hate him. He had toiled and fallen in grief and died and his works faded.

That was what she feared most, more than any physical danger being politically active would put her in. That she would struggle and risk and gain no reward but hate and fading away. What works of Tar-Palantir survived today?

…what works of his had she stewarded well?

She had feared the effort, the risk with no promise of reward, and that had sent Niluben to his death. Because she hadn’t tried. Because she convinced herself she had no power- and yet she was Queen. It may not have been all the power possible, but it was much more than most could dream of.

(And a risk with no promise of reward? What was the gift of death, but that? She believed in Eru, and not the work of her own hand. Which sounded all very humble and pious and Faithful, until one remembered that you could see the work of one’s own hand much more than Eru’s.) 

She tried to protect herself from the pain of wasted effort—and other people had hurt for it. Other people had died for it. Other people _would_ die for it.

She could not change the past. ( _If only we had not done this,_ cried the Noldodantë, _if only we had not done that, we may yet have lived in the bliss of Valinor--)_ But she had to something now. She had to try and not sit and watch as more burn.

She fell back on the bed. But what could she do?

* * *

Zimrazagar marched over to Sauron’s office. She had an offer. It’d be difficult to make, but she had offer it.

Maybe Melkor could actually end death. Maybe he was real, and not some fairy story to explain earthquakes and malicious maia. Maybe he was the also the sort of person that insisted on payment to end death.

Maybe.

Maybe that would make sacrifices worth it—but not unwilling ones.

When she had signed up on campaign, she had signed up knowing she might die, so that others may live. She made peace with that.

If her death could bring the end of death, the ending of mortality, one one-thousandth closer—that would save millions. It would be worth it, worth it ten times over.

So, she had to make the offer. The willing in the stead of the unwilling.

She told Miriel that she had some bureaucracy she had to do today.

Miriel seemed to think it was an excuse to cover huddling in a corner to grieve, and let her go with no remark.

She hadn’t told Miriel about the offer she would be making.

…she’d have to work out how to tell her, if the offer was accepted. Miriel was, in theory, pro-death and people facing their end with dignity and a modicum of acceptance and good cheer—but maybe not in this way.

But she still had to offer.

She knocked on the door to Sauron’s office.

“Ah, Zimrazagar. Come in, if you please,” he said through the door.

Zimrazagar opened the door entered.

He sat at his desk, waving a hand in the direction of a chair, offering her a seat. He smiled soothingly. “How are you feeling after yesterday? I am aware what happened was—intense. And that you knew the man.”

She stayed standing up, at attention, and looked at the wall behind him. “I have an offer to make. A request. One of the two.”

He cocked his head. “You don’t know which it is?”

“Morgoth needs sacrifices,” she said, reaching the topic sidelong.

“That is correct, yes.”

“I want to end death. So I’m offering myself. As a sacrifice.”

He leaned forward, and picked up a quill, letting it dangle between his fingers. “Now, Zimrazagar, I do very much appreciate that offer, but that will not work.”

She kept staring at the brick wall behind his shoulder, trying to make herself like that brick wall, and trying to avoid spending brain power on following and understanding his facial expressions. (It did not fully work. She was not a wall, and he was in her peripheral vision.) “Why not?” she asked, flatly.

“When you cull the herd, you do not kill the healthy members of the flock.”

_I’m fairly sure that’s not how culling works._

“And you do not cull the—hmm, how to put it.” He tapped the non-inked end of the quill against his cheek. “You avoid culling the valuable members of the herd. You certainly avoid the prize ram. But equally, you avoid the ewes that more or less meet the breed standard.”

“I see,” she said, both to avoid commenting on the fact that apparently she was like a standard conforming sheep, and the fact that the explanation still did not sound right. When you had to cull for a disease, you culled all—but maybe this was a cull for wool. Or it was just a metaphor she was over thinking. She wasn’t the expert on sacrifices. “So sacrifices have to be… bad people.”

“Sacrifice is half about giving something of appropriate value—and a life, no matter how immoral or iniquitous, is a valuable thing—while also clearing away that which holds us back from our goals. You have good moral character, from all that I’ve heard about you, and have no desire to harm anyone or stand against the king. It would be, frankly, half-pointless to sacrifice you. And I am not in the business of killing people without a good reason.”

“I—understand.”

“I hope you do. I wouldn’t want you walking around thinking you have less value than kindling—or less than our astronomer friend, actually.”

She saluted, turned on her heel, and half ran away. How dare he say that. How dare he. He’d even had her half-convinced. Her face went hot

She’d take being valuable—but worth more than Niluben? No. _No._ She had to leave, lest she attack that— _that—monster_ and end up being sacrificed anyway.

He might have been talking out of his arse, anyway, and lying through his teeth. The sacrifices may be for no purpose at all, just pointless bullshit because Sauron thought watching people hurt themselves for no reason was funny.

She couldn’t be sure.

Giving up her life for this might be pointless.

She slapped a wall, and one of the patrolling guards gave her a strange look. It was better than punching it, at least.

_Say what you like about Niluben, he was at least self-consistent._

_He was actually loyal._

* * *

Zimrazagar and Miriel sat in Miriel’s rooms, silent, keeping their distance, as if Niluben’s death and their grief was so much cotton batting between them.

Miriel embroidered—yet another new project she had started in recent times: a field of white stars on indigo cloth, with thin pale blue lines marking out the constellations. A star chart lay open on the bed in front of her.

Zimrazagar sat on one of the couches, and stared out the window. “What would have Niluben wanted?” she asked, breaking the silence. “For his funeral.”

Miriel paused, her stitching fingers stopping, and she stared out either into space or at a wrinkle of the bed covers.

“Miriel?”

“Some Faithful would have—he would have—He would have wanted his body burned. So no one could try to bring him back.”

 _Oh._ Zimrazagar tried to marshal her thought and speech to avoid the morbid soldier’s joke of ‘Well, at least that’s one thing taken care of.’ “But how would have he liked his life marked? Joyously, sadly? Would he have liked it marked at all?”

“I think—I do not think he would mind it being marked. And while he himself may not have grieved his death, he would understand if others did—funerals, after all, are by definition for the living.”

“Would you like to mark it?”

Miriel turned her head to her, and looked at her, with a blank expression, as if her face hadn’t quite caught up with her emotions.

“I’d like to mark it, it’d feel wrong not to, like we forgot him and—” Zimrazagar sighed, and rubbed the back of her neck. “You knew him better than I did.” _You knew him for longer. Knew him honestly._

She blinked, slowly. “I would be happy to come with you.”

* * *

The courtyard that contained Nimloth was no longer guarded or barred from anyone. Why would it be? It no longer contained the tree, and thus, in Ar-Pharazon’s mind, entry to it contained no threat. What would the Faithful do with an empty courtyard?

Miriel patted the stump, sadly, like one would a frail and elderly dog, and walked over to lie back on the grass.

The sun set, and the pinks and oranges in the clouds fading to purple, and the shadows in the courtyard thickening

Zimrazagar carried a bottle of heavily distilled alcohol, and three small glasses. She sat down on the grass next to Miriel, and handed Miriel a glass.

She put the third glass on the ground, next to her.

Miriel watched her, brow furrowed in confusion.

Zimrazagar poured the liquor into the third glass. “It’s a soldier thing,” she explained. “And I know Niluben was not a soldier, but—” she sighed. The glass was nearly over full, and she turned to fill Miriel’s. “You don’t drink without your comrades, and if a comrade has fallen, you don’t still leave them out. Especially not if it’s recent.”

Miriel looked up at the sky. “He didn’t drink much nowadays, but back when he was younger—” She smiled at the memory, despite herself and her grief. “He told me a story of when he was student, where he and his friends kept trying to steal each other’s beer starters.”

“Was his the best starter?”

“Oh, heavens no. Apparently friends swapped his out for theirs, when they feared someone might steal it, to sabotage the thief.” She took a sip. “Stars were always a better friend to him than yeast was.”

She lay back against the grass, nursing her glass against her chest. “Did he have a favourite star? …do astronomers have favourites?”

“One of his first projects was tracking the stars of the Valarcirca, trying to measure their movement and distance. I don’t know if his love for the constellation came from the project, or his love for the project from the constellation, but—” She circled her finger around the rim of the glass.

The sky darkened, the twinkling stars of the constellation starting to make their selves obvious. “It’s a good constellation,” Zimrazagar said

Miriel took a sip. “Varda put it in the sky to threaten Melkor.”

“All the more reason to like it, then.”

“Quite,” Miriel said.

They sat in silence, for a minute, before Miriel started humming, and the humming became song. A soft, sad song, sung through a throat scratched from crying, but music nonetheless.

Zimrazagar followed along, haltingly, not knowing the language, let alone the words.

She finished, and Miriel smiled sadly. “His favourite,” she said by way of explanation. “And a hymn to the Star Kindler.”

They sat the rest of the night, watching as the stars shone brighter as the sky around them darkened, and watching their slow movement from the sky. They may have not gotten as much understanding out of that as Niluben would, but it felt fitting nonetheless, to celebrate his life and mark his passing by doing the thing he dedicated his life to.

In a kinder world, there would have been a sign. A shooting star would have streaked across the sky, a message from the world that Niluben had not fully departed it, or could at least make his influence known, or that there was someone up there who had noticed what had happened, that there was some big cheese out there who had seen Niluben and his death and at least witnessed it. It would have been fitting, cathartic, symbolic—just some sign that he mattered, and that there was something above them in that big dark.

It did not happen.

The sky stayed dark and indifferent, until the dawn came.

* * *

Zimrazagar’s reports became vaguer. If her reports had caused, even in some small part, Niluben’s death, she had to stop that from happening again.

She did not need to make her reports deliberately vaguer. The circle of Faithful around Miriel had been gutted by the flight to Romenna, and the heart had been removed with Niluben’s death. What could she report, other than that the meetings had stopped? That was the unvarnished truth. The only meetings as such were between her and Miriel, and they did not really count (as there was only one Faithful member there.)

Ar-Pharazon was still interested in his wife’s activities, of course.

He got very detailed reports of what embroidery she was working on.

Todephel ground her teeth when she received them, but what could she could complain about? It was the truth.

The latest star patterned cloak was coming along very nicely. She was up to doing the satin stitches on the crater of the Moon.

* * *

Miriel had to claw some sliver of influence out of somewhere, somehow.

But the current court was a lost cause. She was the Faithful remnant they could not cast out (could not throw into the fire), the daughter-shadow cast by her dead father. She could rouse and plead and declaim and whisper and gossip and use every single lever of influence she had, and it would be for naught. If she had started earlier, she could have done something. But years had passed. She had wasted opportunity. Let it slip through her fingers.

She needed fresh ears. She needed someone she could influence, and influence the court through.

She looked down at the half-used bundle of shepherdess’ friend, and at her lap. Had this been what Inzilbeth thought? Had this been her plan? Or was her father a surprise that she made the best opportunity out of? Had she raised him knowing that one day he would sit on the throne, or had she just raised him as she would any child of hers?

Did it matter?

She was not her grandmother.

She had said, once, that she did not have the skills of her grandmother or father. But did they have those skills, at the start?

Did it matter?

People burned and suffered and died in the temple every day. She had to do something. Plans that would have been too risky once were the only option now, because they might do something.

It felt wrong to think about a person—a potential person, a potential life—in such an instrumental way. Like ordering more pikes for the infantrymen. It seemed wrong to bring someone in the world, so they could undo the wrongs wrought by their father.

But what choice did she have?

Zimrazagar was out training. That was good. It was best if she didn’t have to think about this. (It would be best for Miriel, selfishly, if Zimrazagar did not get the opportunity to ask questions.)

She threw the Shepherdess’ friend out the window, and strode out of her rooms to Ar-Pharazon’s office.

She felt—almost unfaithful. It was strange, Ar-Pharazon was her husband, so this was the opposite of being unfaithful, but— Maybe it was that she was treating him as an instrument, towards her own goals, that were counter to his own. That was it, yes.

(That was it, in part. But she had lain with Zimrazagar more than her husband—and some things, the marriage of choice versus the marriage of law, mattered.

But she had a duty to Númenor.

Zimrazagar would understand. Or accept it. Or eventually make peace with it. Or something.)

She knocked on Ar-Pharazon’s office door, and entered.

He looked up from his notes. “What do you want,” he said flatly.

She strode in, trying to fake confidence. She had never seduced anyone before. (Unless crying on a balcony counted—and that seemed unlikely to work here.) She’d just have to—make it up. Plenty of people made it up as they went along, and the mankind still existed, so it must, on some level, work. And she had seen Ar-Pharazon’s seduction style. It was not an unreasonable guess that he might appreciate advances made in a similar manner.

She tapped his chin, and ran her fingers up his jaw. “I have—a proposition for you.”

“It has been awhile,” he said. “I always thought you only did it out of—duty.” He waved a hand in a circular gesture. “It is not… pleasant that way.”

She ran her hand down his neck, and rested it on his shoulder. She swallowed, and tried to make it sound like she _wasn’t_ telling the greatest lie she had ever told. “I fear I may not have been as demonstrative as I should have been, my king.” Ar-Pharazon liked being ‘my king,’ or ‘my lord’ she had noticed. He liked being the most important person in the room, the one who called the shots, the one who everyone obeyed with a smile and good cheer. It was a repugnant quality, but one she could use.

He rested his hand on hers. “I fear that may be so.”

She did nt mention any part of her plan, not even the mere possibility of an heir. He’d consider it a sign she thought he would remain mortal, and that would not do.

He wanted to live forever, more than he wanted be important.

She lifted the hem of her skirt, slowly slowly slowly, hoping that would count as a tease.

He smiled, and cocked an eyebrow. “Here?”

She kept lifting her skirt. “Why not? There is no time like the present.”

He stood up and locked the door. He walked back to the desk, lifter her up onto it, and He put her unbuckled his belt.

She held her skirts up.

It hurt when he entered, but she made no sounds. She had a duty to do.

He thrusted once, twice, and she remembered her cover story.

She made the sounds Zimrazagar made, the sounds Zimrazagar had pulled out of her, and hoped that would be close enough. She threw her head back, as if in the throes of passion, and closed her eyes, and imagined as if the flesh inside her was Zimrazagar’s flesh. Even if that was not possible—the mind and the body could be fooled, and they were.

Ar-Pharazon spilled inside her, and withdrew.

She gathered up her skirts, smiled in a shaky manner, and left.

It felt strange afterwards, breaking the habit, and not taking Sheperdhess’s friend.

She sat on her couch, and started embroidering. The stitches and the hand movements required blurred in her mind as she thought. She was growing older, as was Ar-Pharazon. It would likely take more than one attempt.

…She could do that. To do her duty. To save Númenor.

* * *

Zimrazagar found the evidence that night, sticking onto her fingers as she stroked and massaged Miriel’s core.

She didn’t mention it.

Miriel appreciated that.

* * *

The weather turned sour. It was a slow, piece by piece, drip by drip process.

The rains came later in the wet season than they usually did, and then when they started, they continued past when they should have stopped in the dry season.

Earlier in the rains, the farmers rejoiced, for it would not be a drought. And those first rains were gentle, like the usual rains.

But they grew in heaviness. Fields grew waterlogged, and crops rotted in the wet. What crops did not rot where washed away in floods, that sent cabbages rolling down Armenelos streets that had become streams and creeks.

Ar-Pharazon pressed the merchant marine and the army to get food from Middle Earth. Once, they had left the food to the people that lived there, and took worked goods as vassal-tax. But Númenor was about to go hungry, and that would not do.

(The fleets of her old boss where shifted from ferrying gold and silver to ferrying wheat and fruit.)

And the winds came, harsh and fast and toppling trees and ships alike. Lightning poured out of the sky like sheets, starting fires that were put out almost as fast as they started by the rain. Winds ripped the thatch off the pauper’s roofs.

(The entire fleet of her old company was sunk in one night, by a storm twice as strong as expected. Some managed to float into the harbour of Romenna clinging onto what wood was left. Most did not.)

In the chaos, few marked the bats coming out of the half blown over copses on the Meneltarma—

And coming to roost in the city.

* * *

Miriel lead Rocharan down the aisles of the stables, meet up with Birchie and Zimrazagar.

Birchie had been moved from the paddocks to the stables, after Zimrazagar’s salary went up. Which was good, considering that she’d end up soaked through in the paddocks, even with a blanket, and living on wet ground would do her hooves no good.

It normally didn’t take that long for them to get ready, less time than it did her and Rocharan, even with all the grooms. (Because of the grooms, honestly.)

But they hadn’t emerged from Birchie’s stable. It was unusual, but not necessarily concerning, and it was no trouble for her to walk Rocharan to them rather than vice versa.

“Oh, for the love of peace!” Zimrazagar shouted.

Miriel walked faster towards the source of the noise. “Are you alright?”

Birchie was pressed up against the wall of her stable, ears held tight back and pawing at the ground with her front foot.

Zimrazagar stood at the corner of the stable, holding a pitchfork like a pike braced against a cavalry charge.

The corner was dark, and Miriel had squint to see what Zimrazagar was threatening with the pitchfork.

It was a bat. A small one, fluttering its wings in agitation. “Come on, out you go. I don’t want to hurt, you but--” she waved the fork for emphasis.

The bat dropped off its perch, and fluttered to the corner near the door and Miriel.

Zimrazagar turned, still gesturing with the fork. “You’re nearly out, just keep going.”

It flew away, and roosted in the rafters of the stables. Zimrazagar looked up at it, with weariness and annoyance. “…At least it’s not my problem, any more.” She grabbed Birchie’s bridle from where she had balanced it over the door. “Sorry, my lady, for the delay.”

Miriel waved a hand. “No, no, it’s quite alright. You had to clear out Birchie’s house of unwanted guests, and I’m sure Birchie appreciates that. Don’t you girl?”

Birchie relaxed a fraction, and dipped her head to let Zimrazagar put her bridle on.

They went out and rode, while the rain was only a light drizzle instead of storms.

Zimrazagar shaded her eyes with her hands. “The clouds in the west are dark,” she said. “And travelling fast.”

They maybe had an hour before the storms hit.

They did not ride out on their usual track. The paths on the hill were too muddy and treacherous, and the stream had turned from something fordable into something that could sweep a horse and rider away. They walked their horses on the paved roads around the stables, and pretended that was enough for them.

* * *

The storm clouds rolled over Armenelos, dark and strange shaped, and all the more threatening for it.

The rain came down in sheets, making a waterfall that flowed over Miriel’s balcony, and covering the glass doors with a sheet of rain.

Zimrazagar watched the water rolling down the doors, and kept her eyes off the clouds. They were dark and threatening and strange-shaped and staring up at them only made them appear larger and worse, and she had better things to do than freak herself out about clouds.

Miriel stared up at the clouds, head back and scanning them. “Eagles,” she whispered.

Zimrazagar glanced up at the clouds. If you squinted through the rain, you could say the shape was like a bird, with two symmetrical wings and a downwelling bottom near the front making a beak. “I suppose they look like it, I guess.”

“I fear they may be a message. From Manwe.”

Zimrazagar took a swig of tea from the cup in her hand. “He could send a more obvious message.”

“I’d say this is fairly obvious,” she said, clipped.

“He could send a messenger. Or a letter, if he fears for the messenger’s safety. But strange shaped clouds? That’s not clear.”

Miriel looked at her. “Do you really think that?”

Zimrazagar sipped her tea, and didn’t answer.

* * *

Zimrazagar ran through the rain, holding an oil skin above her head, towards the stables. It was dark—the sun only just peaked over the horizon, most of its light blocked and diffused by the clouds—but she knew the way well enough that it didn’t matter.

And the skies to the west were clear, with fading stars showing.

She’d be able to take Birchie out of her stable, and give her some turn out. And the poor dear really needed it. She may not have been as hot or fresh as she was when she was younger, but she still went a little stir crazy in a stable. With the paddock merely being flooded, as opposed to it being flooded, raining, and the water rising with every minute—okay, it wasn’t perfectly safe to take her out there, but the risk was lower than the reward and joy she’d have being able to run and buck and get all the excess energy out.

Zimrazagar sprinted the last few metres to the stable entrance, and hung up the oil skin on a hook. Water dripped down from it, forming a little puddle.

Grooms puttered around, raking and mucking and feeding and watering—and seeming strangely subdued.

Zimrazagar didn’t question it. Dawn was a busy time, and one did not interrupt the grooms lest you faced their wrath—especially if something was causing them to be subdued. She walked down the aisle towards Birchie.

One of the other horses snorted loudly, breathing hard and sweating like she’d just galloped three miles. _The poor guy,_ she thought. He must be sick, or actually just actually galloped three miles. If it was the first, that might be why the grooms were subdued.

That was a shame. She was one of Birchie’s paddock mates.

She stepped around, past the pillar that hid Birchie’s stable from view of the door—

And stopped dead when she saw Birchie. If that other horse looked bad—Birchie looked worse. Some of it may have been knowing Birchie better, knowing her signs of illness and health better—but this was _bad._

She sweated hard, almost as wet as she would be if someone had thrown a bucket of water over her. She breathed hard—not just fast, though her breath was definitely coming faster than it should, but like she was having to work harder than she should to breathe, like there was something in her throat that she was having to lean around.

But more worrying was the way she swayed. Zimrazagar couldn’t put her finger on why it struck her as worse—just that it was so different than what she had normally seen. Birchie did not like being cooped up in a stable, but she had no vices. But here she was, swaying side to side, foot to foot. It was less like vice swaying, and more like she kept losing her balance. She kept leaning so far she’d nearly topple over, catching herself, and then over compensating and going over the other side.

She’d been healthy last night when she last checked on her, and she’d just plummeted to this overnight. That was almost worse than the symptoms themselves. That speed was terrifying.

Zimrazagar opened the stable door, and walked in.

Birchie watched her—but her eyes were dull and tired.

“I’m here girl, don’t worry,” she said softly. She ran her finger’s under Birchie’s jaw to find her pulse, and tapped her feet to the rhythm. Too fast, much too fast. And her skin was too hot underneath her hands. This was bad.

She rolled her shoulders, and took a deep breath, opened the stable door, and closed it behind her. She had to stay calm. Panicking wouldn’t help. _Just do it step by step. One foot in front of the other._

She exited the stable building, looking for someone she could ask for help, a runner or a horse healer or just anyone..

A palace runner waited under an awning, leaning against the wall, waiting for the post-dawn rush.

“Hello,” Zimrazagar said, her voice flat. Rain poured over her, soaking through her hair and cloak. She didn’t fully register it.

The runner looked up, saw her guard breastplate and raised an eyebrow in an unspoken question. _What do you want?_

“I have two messages to send. First, to Ar-Zimraphel, apologising for my delay. And, if you find one, I need the services of a horse healer.”

The runner jerked their head around the corner of the stable block. “There’s a horse healer just round there.”

“Thank you.” Zimrazagar nodded, and turned and walked around that corner, trying to stay calm and keep walking without running.

The horse healer exited one of the outdoor stable yards. She wore a healer’s white tunic, but with mud stained boots and jodphurs on the bottom. She looked at Zimraphel tiredly, eyes half down cast and with bags under them already. “Another?”

“There’s an outbreak?”

“Probably.” She shrugged. “I haven’t seen this before, but a lot of them have got it.” She sighed. It wasn’t an annoyed sigh, but a deeply exhausted one. “Take me to the next one.”

Zimrazagar lead her to Birchie.

She walked into the stable, feeling her temperature and pulse.

“She the same as the others?” Zimrazagar asked. She didn’t know what answer she hoped for.

“The swaying is a new one, but the high temperature and pulse? Yes.” The horse healer stepped out of the stable. “I can’t offer much. I can give you a paste that’ll bring down her fever, and putting sugar and salt in her water will help with the sweating, if she’ll drink.”

“What’s the course of the disease?”

The horse healer shrugged. “This only started yesterday. I haven’t seen any pull through yet, but it’s early days.”

Zimrazagar nodded her thanks, and took the paste.

Birchie stood in her stable, head low and swaying.

She put a blob of paste on her finger, and ran it along Birchie’s gums.

Birchie let that happen. Normally she tried to get away from medication, tossing her head, and if she was in a paddock, running away. But she just stood there.

Zimrazagar patted her sadly. Birchie was probably just—tired. That’s why she didn’t struggle. Soon, she’d be feeling better, and back to being a complete pain in the butt.

She couldn’t convince herself of that, but she tried anyway.

She begged some sugar and salt off the grooms, and dissolved it in Birchie’s water.

And then she left. She took her oilskin off the hook, and walked towards the Palace.

The rain had petered out to a glum drizzle.

She felt bad about leaving Birchie—but what else could she do? She could hang around, and try and entertain her and keep her company… but she had a job. One she had to do.

And Birchie probably needed quiet and rest more than anything.

* * *

She returned near dusk. Normally she would go and spar at this time—that, strictly speaking, was the reason she had leave to not guard Miriel.

But Birchie was more important.

She walked through the stable complex, each new sweaty or swaying horse catching her eye.

Rocharan, Miriel’s horse, paced his stable in circles, his head cocked to one side. A groom watched him, mouth pressed into a tight line. Zimrazagar let them be.

She walked around the pillar blocking Birchie’s stable from sight—

She wanted to see Birchie fine. Bright eyed and a little bored, munching hay, and looking at her as if to say “Well, what was all that fuss this morning for?”

She’d take her still swaying, still sweaty and feverish, but no worse than before.

She found Birchie on the floor.

She was collapsed, legs spread awkwardly under her like a squashed spider. She saw Zimrazagar, and started to stand up. Her legs shook as she stood, picking herself up limb by limb, forelegs first. It was painful to watch—but strangely elating. If she could stand up, she must have just been sleeping funny. If she could stand up, no matter how weak she was, then there was a chance she could pull through.

Birchie stood up, and stood for a second, swaying and shaking—

\--and collapsed again, this time on her other side. It was like watching the tower of a building topple, as if from fire or earthquake, or like watching mud slide down a mountain, taking half the peak with it.

Birchie looked up at her, shaking and in pain. She was breathing hard, sides heaving, each breath a monumental effort.

Zimrazagar didn’t scream. Screaming would scare Birchie, and the other horses, and that would be bad. She entered the stable, and cradled Birchie’s head. “It’s okay girl, it’s going to be okay,” she lied, because even if Birchie didn’t understand Adunaic, she herself did, and maybe she could convince herself.

Birchie nuzzled her lap, wiping snot on her pants.

She patted her forelock. “It’s gonna be okay. You’re strong, and we can work something out.”

Birchie relaxed a fraction at the sound of her voice, so Zimrazagar kept up the stream of comforting nonsense. “It’s going to be alright. Trust me girl, we’re gonna work something out, and you’re going to pull through and it will be fine—”

The horse healer walked past, and shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

Zimrazagar looked up at her. She towered over her, and she may as well have been halfway across a public square with the mesh door between them “Is there anything you can do? Is there any chance she could get up?”

The horse healer shook her head, and left.

Zimrazagar wanted to shout after her, ask her which question did she answer! But it didn’t matter, really, which one it was. She wanted to shout at her to stay, to do something, to tell her what to do! But there must have been other horses—Horses is in worse straits. No. Horses that could still be saved.

Or horses without anyone with them as they shook and fell.

Horses with owners with no swords.

She fell forwards, onto Birchie’s face, and wept.

Birchie was shaking and in pain and she had fallen and wasn’t going to get up and she had to do something about it—and she could. And that was almost worse.

She’d killed Birchie’s “sister”, her driving mate, back on campaign, when she had broken her leg. But that had had a finality to it that a mystery disease did not. You couldn’t convince yourself that the horse with a visible break could heal and get up again. But with this, maybe she could.

Maybe it was because she knew Birchie better, had known her for far more years and far more closely.

Maybe it was because Birchie should have been safe in Númenor. Safe from disease in Middle Earth, safe from being shot at by bows, or driven too hard because someone _had_ to cart the injured from the front lines. Safe from anything but the freakest of accidents.

She shouldn’t be on a floor, dying far too slowly.

Birchie shook harder. She was so hot, she was burning up--

Zimrazagar kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry. I tried.” She stood up, gently picking up Birchie’s head off her lap and laying it on the floor. Her head felt so heavy, Birchie barely able hold it up herself.

She drew her sword. “I’m sorry. I’m going to make it better.”

Birchie’s eyes tried to follow her, but she was standing in her blindspot. Her ears pointed towards her, but she could barely keep them upright. 

She lined the point of her sword up with Birchie’s forehead, between her eyes. She thrust, hard, hard as she could, hard so she could break through the bone on the first try and go right through.

Birchie didn’t collapse. She was already on the floor, already as far down as she could have fallen. Her sides stopped heaving. She stopped breathing.

Zimrazagar cast her sword aside onto the straw, and knelt down beside her.

She couldn’t hear her—but that didn’t matter. “I’m sorry, girl.”

* * *

They burned Birchie and the other horses that night. A pyre was set up in the furthest paddock, and people scrambled to find enough dry wood. There was no reason to believe that burning the bodies would halt the spread of infection—but more and more horses were coming down with symptoms every hour, and they had to try something.

Zimrazagar watched the flames from the opposite hill. (They wouldn’t let her get any closer, lest the miasma stick to her and spread to others.) She couldn’t see Birchie from this distance—but it felt wrong for her to burn without anyone witnessing it. Even if she was dead, and couldn’t notice her absence—she shouldn’t be alone.

Miriel stood next to her, and squeezed her hand.

* * *

Rocharan lasted three days. Miriel spent most of them by his side.

He looked like, at one point, he was going to pull through. That despite being an old, old codger, he’d be the first to make a miracle recovery and be back to his normal self.

And then it looked like he might live, even if his head always stayed cocked to the side.

On the third day, he died overnight. It was in his sleep, and arguably peaceful—But he’d spent the last few days sore and feverish and pacing in his stable to the point of exhaustion.

Miriel wept. Not just for Rocharan—who while maybe not a noble steed, was a fine and steady trail horse and a good friend—but for her father, also. Rocharan was his steady trail horse, when he’d started getting older and the hot-blooded young jumpers were too much for him. Rocharan was on the young side, but he’d been born old and steady.

He was one of the last few things of Tar-Palantir’s left alive—and now, no more. One of the few pieces of his legacy that had survived—and now he had died in an outbreak of a mysterious plague.

And to think, what sort of daughter she was, if one of the few pieces left of Tar-Palantir’s legacy was a _horse._

Zimrazagar patted her on the shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Miriel dabbed her eyes. “I’ll be alright.”

“No, you won’t. They always leave a hole—even the horses. It’s how it works.”

“I know, but if feels foolish—”

Zimrazagar offered a shaky smile. “He carried you on his back willingly. If that doesn’t make you close, I don’t know what does.”

Miriel nodded, and swallowed thickly. She leaned forward, dangling her hands over a fence post. “I’m not just mourning him. That’s what feels foolish.” She paused, and swallowed again. “He was my father’s.”

“Oh.” She’d told Zimrazagar that before, but now the import seemed to strike her. “One of the last things of him.”

Miriel waved a hand towards the pyre. “And now—no more.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Horses die. People die. It was not your decision.”

* * *

Just as the plague started burning out among the horses, it spread to the people. The horse healers and the strappers and the grooms came down one by one. First with light fevers, and headache, and fatigue. All things you could say were just stress, just exhaustion from dealing with the disaster in the palace stables.

But the fevers got worse. And the coughing came.

Some pulled through, unlike the horses. Some lived, with scarred lungs and a fatigue that never went away—but they still breathed, their hearts still beat and their lungs still breathed even if they only got half a breath each time.

But half? Half were not so lucky.

It was marked as the first plague on the shores of Númenor, since the days of Elros Tar-Minyatur.

It was not the last.


	8. Ten of Swords/Ten of Swords

The storms kept coming.

Ar-Pharazon built a fleet. No war was declared, no cause claimed—but everyone knew what they were for. Why these ships were docked in the West.

Zimrazagar didn’t say anything. With the amount of ships, the amount of soldiers that would be needed to fill them, she’d be called up.

And she should say no. Refuse and struggle and get cast onto a fire if necessary. Going to war with the Valar was foolish and malicious and _no_ , and to do it because of Tar Mairon was terrible.

Sure, it was in theory Ar-Pharazon’s idea, but they all knew who had put him up to it. And she’d seen what the king was like. What he did, when the right person whispered in his ear, and when the chips came down.

But she remembered the general of old. Wise and generous and mighty in war. Some stupid animal part of her wanted to follow him, to relive the Good Old Days that were neither good nor old but they were hers and his, damnit.

She wanted to climb that goddamn holy mountain in Avallone and yell “Yes! We fucked up! Yes, we’re terrible! But you are _awful_ at communicating.” She wanted to bow and scrape and whisper “Please, forgive us. Not all of us committed this. Have mercy on us. Have mercy on those few that did not stray.” 

She wanted to stand by Ar-Pharazon’s side, and use her sword arm to protect him.

She wanted to land on that beach, and as everything crashed around them because they were trying to fight the Powers, stab Ar-Pharazon. Stab him and hold the bloody sword high and say “Look what he did. Look what he did to us. Let’s turn back. Both on this land, and what we have done.”

She wanted to stab Sauron on that same beach, and see Ar-Pharazon return to his sense once that drip feed of poison into his ear was gone.

She wanted to do all of that, and more. A conflict of motive against motive, desire against desire. Wisdom versus sense, mixed loyalties spinning against each other.

(Ar-Pharazon had done so much wrong—but it was Sauron’s idea, wasn’t it? Ar-Pharazon just had the bad luck to be being able to be convinced, to have a mind that could be changed. It was Sauron’s fault, really. And to follow Ar-Pharazon was not the same as following Sauron.)

(Her hair started coming in grey, and old wounds that she thought were full healed made their presence re-known. Her experience in sword work so far made up for what she lacked in youthful strength. _So far._

She did not want to die. Least of all in a bed, as her body finally gave out on her and her soul lost its grip in the world. If she had to die, let it be on a battle field. If she had to die, let her _be useful_.

She would say that this did not affect her decision. This was all well-reasoned, and not the clinging fear of the death and the darkness beyond it etched into her bones. Not the terror of mankind’s gift-curse, that had been her mother’s, and her mother’s mother’s before her.

No. She would not say it was her decision.

It was her King’s)

* * *

Most services in the Temple were indoors. On account of the Temple being indoors. Not least because of the rain.

But not today’s service.

Today, all the worthies were gathered and stuffed onto balconies overlooking the Temple’s square. Everyone else crowded around inside the square, getting bucketed on by the rain.

Tar-Mairon the Excellent was ranting on the roof.

(Zimrazagar felt she could be a _bit_ flip about the situation, considering roof rants seemed to avoid the human sacrifices that were starting to alarmingly blend into each other in her memory.)

Tar-Mairon paced, and Zimrazagar wondered idly if he would miscalculate on the rain slicked roof and fall into the louvre. It probably wouldn’t even harm him, unfortunately.

Tar-Mairon shouted over the rain, and the loud rattle of water against the silver roof of the Temple. “Do not fear the rain! It is sent by the Valar. Is it punishment? What have we done to deserve punishment?”

Miriel raised an eyebrow.

Zimrazagar gently elbowed her. Part of protecting her lady was stopping her from causing a diplomatic incident that would make more people dislike her. Like openly questioning a religious official with her face.

“How can he not know the answer to that question?” Miriel murmured to her, facing forwards with a newly blank expression.

Sauron was blissfully unaware, to distracted by his own speech. “Or is it an attack, intimidation? I say it is. But what do we have to fear? If this is all they can do to us, a little rain, a little sturm and drang from the clouds, then I say to them ‘do your worst!’”

Light flashed across the sky, harsh and bright. So harsh and bright that Zimrazagar could see nothing else, her vision whiting out. She blinked, but it was too late.

Thunder boomed, louder than she had ever heard it. It shook her through her feet and into her ribcage, jarring her heart with its wall of bass roar. It sounded like a dragon screaming next to her ear, one thousand lions roaring at once.

She opened her eyes.

Tar-Mairon still stood on the roof, standing on a blackened patch of silver under his feet. A bit further down, there was a melted rent in the roof, with molten silver dripping into the black abyss of the Temple itself. He—steamed? smoked?—lightly, white vapour curling off his body.

Yes, that was smoke, the shoulder of his robe was on fire. He hadn’t seemed to have noticed. The gold embroidery blackened and burned away.

If Zimrazagar didn’t know better, she would say he looked slightly stunned.

(She guessed being hit by lightning would do that to you, even if you were a mighty Maia.)

He regained his composure quickly. He held his arms out wide. “See?”

The crowd cheered at his survival. Cheered at his defiance of the Valar, the sky, and the conductivity of his body. Cheered because they could treat rains were not a threat that could kill, but as something to rail against. It was easier to rail than to fear, if you were directed, even if they were much the same emotion.

Tar-Mairon continued his rant, as if he had never been struck at all, mentioning it no more after his simple ‘See?’. He didn’t need to. They had all seen it. It was more powerful—more comforting, even, to a certain sort of person—to see him shrug it off, and dismiss it as unimportant.

* * *

Tar-Mairon had been mighty. But after the incident, his might grew more than could be imagined.

But he withdrew from court, regardless, to the Temple.

It did not matter if he was physically present. His influence was everywhere.

* * *

Miriel’s period was late.

…she may have just been getting older. She was at near enough an age that it was possible. It would be early, but life spans had been shortening.

Or maybe she actually was--?

She put her needle in the cloth, to keep it from getting lost.

She’d—have to wait and see, she guessed.

Maybe by the time Ar-Pharazon sailed off, she’d know.

* * *

Ar-Pharazon called Zimrazagar to his office. He looked old. He looked tired.

She knew intellectually that he did not look that much different, but he that air of fatigue and exhaustion peculiar to the old. His face was lined—only to the level of looking somewhat weather beaten and rugged—but there were lines none the less.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” She stood up straight, and confident. Once she had been nervous in his presence, but no longer. Familiarity banished fear.

“I have a mission for you.”

“Yes, sir?”

He threaded his fingers together, and looked at her, hard. “Who are you loyal to?”

An echo of the first time they met, the first time they met face to face, as individuals, not as part of a crowd or group. The way he looked at her, she wondered if he knew. If he knew how divided her loyalties were now, unlike on that day many years ago. If he knew who her loyalties were divided between.

“To Númenor,” she said flatly, professionally. “And its rightful rulers and government.”

He nodded. Maybe he didn’t know. Didn’t know that even she wasn’t quite sure who the rightful ruler was. Or maybe he had just gotten more confident in his older age. “You have seen the ships,” he said.

“I have, sir.”

“We march on Avallonë. And I will need very able-bodied hand I can find, if we wish to win that war—but I would also appreciate more experienced non-commissioned officers.”

“It would be an honour, sir.” She should say no. She should decline.

But a chance to speak to the Powers, to plead mankind’s case, however unfit to plead she was? The chance for everything to go wrong so obviously, no one questioned her stabbing Ar-Pharazon and Sauron and cutting the whole tragedy short? The chance to see Ar-Pharazon, somehow, be right?

( ~~The chance for one last glorious battle, and the chance of eternal life?)~~

“Good. We sat sail in a week. It will take three days to march to Eldalondë. Apologies for the short notice,” he said, unapologetic.

She nodded. “I understand.”

“You are dismissed.”

* * *

Miriel looked up, as Zimrazagar re-entered her rooms.

Zimrazagar closed the door, the latch activating with an ominous click. She looked—it was hard to describe her air. It wasn’t deflated or dejected. She stood much to straight for that. It was a carefully assumed blankness and professionalism, held together with a thread.

Miriel laid her embroidery on her lap, nervously smoothing out the linen against her thigh.

Zimrazagar sat on the opposite couch, hands braced on her thighs. “You’ve heard about the ships.”

“Of course I have. I was in the budget meeting that authorised them.” She had been the one dissenting voice. Tar-Mairon had glared at her, his eyes glowing like hot metal and his gaze possibly just as dangerous to her health as red hot steel. She was not invited to future budget meetings.

Zimrazagar paused. “I’ve been mustered.”

“How did Ar-Pharazon take it? Presumably not well.”

Zimrazagar cocked her head. “Take what?”

“Your refusal.” She looked at Zimrazagar’s face, trying to read it. Zimrazagar was—she may not be Faithful, she could not be sure of that, even after so long, but she was sympathetic to them. She would npt fight the Valar. That was so obviously foolish and wrong—

Or had she just assumed Zimrazagar would think that? “Surely you’re not going?”

“I was ordered to.”

“And you just—agreed?” _No. No no no—_

“I wasn’t in a position to say no.”

She searched for something to say to make Zimrazagar not do that, do anything but march against the Powers of Arda and—“If you do it, you’ll _die_.” If she was not truly Faithful, or not fully Faithful, surely her own mortality could sway her?

“I might die if I deserted.”

Miriel was about to open her mouth with a flurry of _I’ll protect you. What worth am I as a queen if I cannot protect one person, with all my resources. Amandil may be incommunicado, but Elendil owes me a favour, you could be on a ship to the East before anyone notices you are gone—_

Zimrazagar got ahead of her, with a twitch of a rueful smile. “And if I die—aren’t I meant to do that?”

Miriel’s face and stomach fell. She was trying to appeal to Zimrazagar’s beliefs, not have her try to appeal to hers! And a natural death—that was a far cry from a dying while trying to attack Manwe. “It would be wrong.”

Zimrazagar threaded her fingers together, and looked down at them. “I know. But I could maybe curb the worst of it.”

“A lot of evil has been done following evil men, in the hopes of curbing that evil.”

“I know, I just—” Her fingers tensed, almost locking into intertwined fists, like a two handed mace of flesh. “I have a duty to Númenor—"

“—And you can fulfil it by not doing this!—”

“—and someone has to fall on their face in front of the Valar.” That same twitch of a rueful smile. “Someone has to be Eärendil.”

“You don’t have to do it.”

“Who else will? Who else on those boats?”

Miriel wanted to scream, cry, grab Zimrazagar’s ankles to force her to not go. Her reasoning was bad and foolish and was only going to get others hurt, only going to get her killed—she stopped herself. With great effort of will, she stopped herself. Zimrazagar was her own person, who could make her own foolish mistakes, and it would be wrong to stop her following her will.

And someone had to speak with the Valar. She would not have chosen Zimrazagar as that messenger—but who else was available, and able to do so? And even if Zimrazagar was not truly Faithful—she was sympathetic. That had to be enough.

She stood up from the couch, the delicate linen and delicate stitching falling to the floor, and embraced Zimrazagar. “Stay safe. _Please._ ”

Zimrazagar returned the embrace. “I will do what I can.”

* * *

The troops from Armenolos gather in the Temple’s courtyard, in neat rows. They were not at attention, not yet, but tension buzzed through the air.

Even if it was still a reasonable march to Eldalondë, it had started. They were on the way to war, and at least half of them had never seen it. Had no idea what it was like.

 _The poor sods,_ Zimrazagar thought. Your first fight was always a cavalcade of chaos and terror and stress—and to have your first fight be against the Valar? She wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

She stood amongst the palace guards, a newly appliqued stripe on her cloak marking her a sergeant. She chatted quietly with those newly under her command. She’d met them all before, knew their names—there were many palace guards, but not _that_ many—but this was the first time she had led them. And she had always stood a step apart from the other palace guards. It would be tricky to earn their trust and respect. Tricky, but doable, if she started now.

Tar-Mairon stepped out of the Temple’s doors, golden and resplendent. His gold stitched robe was layered with jewellery, long pipes of gold forming a headdress and necklace.

The chatting soldiers hushed quickly. They waited for a speech to start, some rallying sermon on the glory of Melkor and the perfidy of the Valar, et cetera, et cetera.

But Tar-Mairon did not start talking, just stepped down silently down the stairs towards Ar-Pharazon.

The hush deepened, in equal anticipation of the words, and confusion at the lack of them.

Ar-Pharazon dropped to one knee in front of Tar-Mairon.

The whole army dropped as well. Not as one, not as some practiced thing, but an alarmed realisation that if the king was kneeling, they’d better be kneeling too.

Tar-Mairon carried a clay jar and a brush. He murmured a few words to Ar-Pharazon, too soft for Zimrazagar to hear, even though she was near the front of the array. He dipped the brush in the jar, and swiped it over Ar-Pharazon’s forehead.

Ar-Pharazon nodded his thanks, and stayed kneeling.

(Zimrazagar wondered if it was because he was having trouble getting up from the position.)

Tar-Mairon walked down the line in stately, solemn fashion, repeating the procedure.

The army stayed down, as long as the king stayed down.

Her one knee on the cobbles hurt, but Zimrazagar did not dare move position. Not while her king stayed still. Not while her soldiers did. If she showed weakness, or any sign of not acting under the same conditions as them, she’d have no respect.

Tar-Mairon reached her.

She kept her eyes down. She guessed it was the polite thing to do.

“Blessing of Melkor to you, Azraindil Zimrazagar.” He swiped the brush over her forehead. The bristles were soft, the brush covered in a thin, sweet scented oil, with something gritty suspended in it.

He moved to the person next to her, and repeated the procedure and words, including the name. He had memorised all their names. It would not be impossible, for one such as he, but was still surprising.

She saw the brush swipe up close, and saw what was suspended in the oil.

Bone ash.

* * *

After an hour of blessings, the king stood up. The army followed, repressing with great effort a sighs of relief.

They marched, each with one or more bruised knees.

Tar-Mairon watched them, catlike, from the steps of the temple. And didn’t follow them.

Zimrazagar swallowed hard. She thought he would be going with them. It was almost certainly his idea. And he could have spun it as ‘With me on your side, how could you fail?’

But apparently he was sending them to war with Valar while he got to stay in Númenor, and presumably would be eating grapes, possibly feed to him by nubile youths looking to raise their status.

All the more reason to dislike him.

\--But now her plan was in shambles. If he was there, as soon as things went south she could stab him, and show everyone the wrong he’d done.

But if anything did go wrong, he would be an ocean away. And safe.

_Damnit._

She said something vaguely cheering to the soldiers marching behind her, to hide her doubts.

She _had_ a plan.

One that wouldn’t work.

And now she was marching on the Valar. Without a plan.

She had to pin her hopes on getting an audience, or Ar-Pharazon turning back.

* * *

Miriel stayed behind in Armenolos. Important regency business, managing the kingdom, and such like.

That was her stated reasoning, and the reasoning Ar-Pharazon agreed with.

Zimrazagar doubted it. Miriel seemed willing to follow tradition, and give her blessing, on a fleet rowing out to Sauron, but not one rowing out to the Valar. It was understandable, even if Zimrazagar wished she could see her one more time. They’d already said goodbye, and it was possible she would return—but who was she kidding? There were so few ways this could end well.

Zimrazagar stood on the docks, waiting to board Alcarondas, the whole palace guard standing in neat rows on the wooden decking.

Clouds gathered over them. Eagle clouds, again, but these were far more detailed and real than before. Before, they were just vague shapes, the impression of wings and a beak. Now, they had mottled feathers on their undersides, harshly defined beaks with no hint of cloud-fluffiness, and talons reaching down towards the ground.

They moved over the island, over the waters, fast, faster than the wind.

The westerlies died off, except for high up in the sky where the eagles flew.

The air was dead, and humid with the breath and sweat of thousands of people, blanketing the army in steam and stillness.

The sun set in the west, turning the sky blood red and seating the cloud eagles aflame.

 _Red sky at night, mariner’s delight._ That was how the saying always went. Zimrazagar did not believe it this time. Maybe most other times, it was true. But not now.

Ar-Pharazon boarded, and the palace guards marched in lockstep behind them.

The gangway and the boat rocked as they marched on.

It was several hours before the whole army was on the ships. The sun sank below the horizon, but the twilight stayed red and ominous, the only purples in the sky the colour of bruises against the blood-red. More cloud eagles came, blanketing Númenor in darkness, blocking out the stars.

Thunder rumbled above, so loud it almost seemed like lightning must have struck right next to them—but no lightning came. No rain either. Just stillness and the growling of the eagles.

At last, the whole army was on the ships, and Ar-Pharazon placed the crown on his head. He did it dramatically, raising it high above his head and slowly putting it on, like he was playing a king in a stage play, so as many people could see it at once.

The trumpets blew, outblowing the thunder for a moment, in one high, long blast. Chains rattled, loud and harsh, as the anchors were raised, and the anchor hit the deck of Alcarondas with the sound of a gong.

And they were away.

Their sails were up, but there was no point. Not without the wind. At least they did not have the strong westerlies, blowing them the wrong way—but that was a very small mercy.

The sails were for show, showing the screen-printed banners of the different captains and companies. Alcarondas was red, with a black print of the crown and the sceptre, the shapes outlined in gold embroidery, with thread as thick as a child’s first attempt at spinning yarn.

Below the decks, the slaves and captives rowed, pushing towering palaces of ships forward against still waters, inching them forward with sweat and toil. When they had built up some momentum, maybe they would go faster, but now they were fighting just to get the massive ships to start moving, the faster ships moving a whole ten feet per minute.

As the sun rose behind them, blocked by the Meneltarma and the eagle clouds behind them, they left the harbour.

* * *

Miriel worked with Todaphel to organise the Return Party. That was the… code name of the event, and honestly the only thing it could be called.

There was work to be done, keeping the nation running while near half its able-bodied people were at war, but there was work to be done to prepare to celebrate their return.

They were two major difficulties in the preparations. Firstly, they did not know when the army would be returning. And secondly, and more importantly, they did not know what they would be celebrating. A victory, a defeat, the death of king? In previous wars, the latter two had always been a possibility, but now it seemed a likelihood. One that neither she nor Todaphel could voice and acknowledge, but merely share the knowledge that they were trying to organise the catering for what would could be a state funeral.

 _What would happen if Ar-Pharazon died?_ she wondered. Would she be named Queen-Regnant, or regent, or be cast off the throne?

She knew now that she was pregnant. (She wished she could say she knew because she had a birth dream, or something else sweet and pleasant, and not ‘my menses stopped and now I gag at the smell of literally all food.’ But it was what it was.) Would she be Queen; or would her child be named heir, and her regent? Would her child even be acknowledged? Not in the sense of ‘not being a bastard’, but in being treated as if they existed?

If the campaign was short, and Ar-Pharazon died soon—there would be a fair few nobles that would want the excuse to seize power. Miriel knew that she did not have the support to stop them. She may have the right to the throne, but not the power to hold it. And it would be so easy for said nobles to just—ignore the existence or possibility of the child.

Miriel fanned herself. “We may not be able to start the cooking yet, but we may be able to organise bakers and cooks to stand ready.” The air was still and humid, the clouds blocking the heat from escaping from the city, and the condensation blocking their sweat from evaporating.

Todaphel nodded, and wrote down a note to that affect.

To make the heat worse, they had to keep the windows closed. The clouds not only blocked the heat from rising, but blocked the smoke from the Meneltarma from escaping into the upper airs. The city choked on the acrid air rolling down the mountain. The sky was orange, haze stopped you from seeing twenty feet in front of, and the air tasted alarmingly of bacon.

“Will that be all, my lady?” Todaphel asked. She was red faced and sweating, and looked at risk of passing out.

“Unless you have other concerns that you wish to be addressed, yes.”

Todaphel nodded, and left, in search of somewhere cooler.

Miriel looked out the window, towards the Meneltarma. She could just about make out its shadow, it’s shape. But she could see it, unlike anything else that distance away.

It was a sign. A sign as much as the clouds above. Maybe she was being foolish, reading portents where there were none—

But if one wanted to regain the favour of Eru, what better way than observing their holy rites.

Yes, the mountain was banned… but the ban had been enforced by palace guards. Who were, almost to a man, on the western waters right now. Those who remained behind had to be focused on protecting the palace itself.

Climbing it, out of season, to make up for the lost festivals—it would not be nothing. And sending an entreaty straight to Eru may not be likely to work—but if Zimrazagar was having to face the Valar, she had to try, too.

She walked to her rooms, with its sacred texts hidden throughout it. If she was going to send an entreaty, and make up for the wrongs that had been done, she had to do it right. There was no procedures for late or missed Eruhantale’s, and she had to work out what the precedent should be, how to do it properly and perfectly.

And if she did it right, and she became Queen—she could reinstate the tradition properly.

But for now, she’d do it as well as she could.

* * *

After twenty eight days, the ships drew within sight of Avallone, slowly moving past Tol Eressea into the Bay of Túna.

The land looked unreal.

It did not look like a real place that could really exist.

Blinding white sand covered the beaches, with sparkles of green and red and blue dotting it. The plants growing behind the dunes of the beaches were brighter fairy tale green, brighter than even the brightest of rainforests, hot emerald green with bright white flowers.

And Taniquetil. _Taniquetil._ It could not have been a real mountain. A real mountain would have fallen over under its own weight. It was so tall, reaching up past the clouds, and so steep, like an tall-sided triangle. A real mountain could not have been so perfect. It was even more blinding a white than the beaches, without a single mark or mar that made it less than perfect. It was like it was carved by the greatest craftsmen, each cut or cliff in the mountain a perfectly smooth plane, intersecting at perfect angles with all the others, with a completely even layer of frost and snow covering it.

Ar-Pharazon gripped the hand rails, staring at it. He seemed—tense, unsure. For once, _unsure._

She walked up to him.

This was her best chance. If she could get him to turn back now, all bloodshed could be avoided. It was her one oppurtunity, and she had to take it.

She stood next to him. Made it clear she was looking at that shining mountain, with clouds rapidly gathering around it. “Are you sure, sir?”

Ar-Pharazon squeezed the railing, and turned around. “I am,” he said. He started bellowing orders to lower down the landing ships. As the chaos and bustle of lowering them down on ropes started, Ar-Pharazon turned to look over his shoulder at her. “Thank you for the encouragement. The reminder of what I am here to do.”

She nodded, but her stomach dropped. That was not what she meant to do. But she’d done it anyway. Just her luck, really.

back peacefully was no longer an option. Maybe she should stab him now, and try to throw this into disarray—no. No, there was still too many ways that could go wrong. Too many ways whichever general wrested control of the army could lead a march on Avallone in Ar-Pharazon’s name

She had to pin her hopes on the Valar, and her ability to plead her case.

She hopped down onto one of the boats, and grabbed an oar. He squad rowed as one, towards that blinding white beach, rapidly turning grey as the clouds gathered overhead.

It was the only way to end this.

* * *

It took a month for the government of Númenor to start slowly falling over. Not falling as some great, cataclysmic, irrevocable thing, but falling as if the government caught a bad cold. That was the danger of making most of your important leaders generals and then going to war, and leaving behind a regent that no one liked or was that interested in working with.

Miriel sighed. Ar-Pharazon was, in many ways, _smart_ , but he was also a short-sighted idiot.

It didn’t matter. Todaphel could keep the wheels of government greased, and was most likely enjoying her new found ability to do whatever she liked.

The people were growing restless. People always got restless in summer, the heat having more affect than anyone would want to admit—but with the clouds above, and the stillness, and the smoke from the Meneltarma, and so many people missing—it was driving people a little strange. Nothing that would cause riots—riots would require being outside, and no one wanted to do that in air that felt gritty— but there was a tension throughout everything.

Miriel did her best to ignore it. The Erulaitale had already passed a month ago, but it was the closest one to the current date. When Tar-Palantir ascended to the throne, and restarted the three prayers, he waited til the next one rolled around. But she did not have that time. She hoped Eru would forgive her poor timing and tardiness.

She stayed in her room, going over the words of the prayer in her mind, as she finished the embroidery of the star cloak.

The Erulaitale called for a bloodless sacrifice. And she was going alone, and could only offer what she had. The Erulaitale was a celebration of Eru’s creation, and the sacrifice should be fitting to that theme.

And the sacrifice was meant to hurt.

She would finish this embroidery, bundle up all her stitched works, and burn them on the peak of the Meneltarma. Burning was not ideal—but what mattered was that they were offered to Eru wholeheartedly. And to offer wholeheartedly, she had to destroy.

Years of work, about to go up in smoke.

She swallowed. All that effort, gone for nothing but faith— She had to do this right. She would.

If her work must burn, let it burn. Let it burn bright and for a good purpose.

* * *

They marched towards the city on the hill, Tirion-Upon-Tuna.

It was a strange city. It did not, from a distance, seem concerned with function. Not that it seemed non-functional, unlivable, but that function was not its first priority. The walls reared above them as they climbed the hill, and they could see they were made of limestone, carved into a lattice, all the better for pale green vines to grow upon, with white flowers dotting them. But not so much for protection.

They marched, weapons ready, shields up, ready to dodge a volley from siege weaponry.

But they crested the hill, unmolested.

When they reached the walls, they noticed the other strange thing. The city was quiet. No, not quiet: silent. There were no voices, no lowing of oxen pulling carts, the whinnies of horses that sensed the tension of their riders. If she strained her ears, she could hear buildings settle as the air grew cooler.

They were ordered to make camp, and they went about it with efficiency.

_If I wait till the sun fully sets—no midnight, when the watch is at its tiredest, I can escape. I can escape towards that shining mountain, and plead my case._

Her squad whispered.

She looked up from pitching her tent. “What are you talking about?” she said, evenly, trying to project calm and authority.

“That city is empty,” one of her soldiers said.

“Possibly,” she replied.

“And there are holes in the walls,” said a second soldier.

“Yes, there are,” she said, carefully noncommittal.

“We could go in and take valuables.”

Zimrazagar made her face serious. “No. No looting until the war is won.” _And even then—_ But there was no point taking it that far. They were going to be fleeing for their ships, sooner rather than later. “Don’t slow yourselves down.”

The sun set, and she watched as the white walls of the city were bathed in a golden glow, and slowly darkened.

 _At midnight._ She reminded herself. _At midnight._

* * *

Miriel had grown rusty at sneaking. She landed with a crash on a nearby roof. She froze, waiting for someone to investigate, but no one did.

 _My, we are_ very _short handed,_ she thought.

She hopped down onto the ground, and walked out of the palace, towards the Meneltarma, a pack full of fabric at her back. The Erulaitale was meant to occur at noon of the summer solstice, not at night—but she needed to leave when no one would think to be chasing down the regent to ask them an _absolutely vital, the festival would be a disaster if you don’t answer now_ question. And she needed time to climb the mountain. If all went well, she could still do the ceremony at noon, in good time.

She walked onwards, veiled and dressed as a mere peasant. Few marked her passing.

A cloud of smoke from the Temple washed through the streets, pushed down by the clouds above. Miriel held her nose against its stink, and the acrid scent of the smoke from the Meneltarma. Her chest went tight, and her nose burned. Each breath felt like only three quarters of one. But she pushed on.

With the heat, and the smoke, and her age, her progress was slower than expected. She had to keep pausing to catch her breath, her mouth and lungs full of the taste of smoke, each time thinking _should I continue?_ Each time, she levered herself up off the ground, and did.

She would reach the top of the mountain. She would say the prayers. She would—she would burn her work, with gratitude.

She just had to take it one step at a time.

* * *

It came in the night.

Zimrazagar sat up in her tent, desperately trying to keep awake, waiting anxiously with a knot in her stomach for the chance to run, and hope she wasn’t caught and branded as the deserter she was—and then she heard the sound.

It was loud, louder than anything she’d heard before, ringing and pounded against her ears, vibrating through her chest. It sounded like a roar, like the voice of a mighty trumpet, like the scrape of stone against stone.

It sounded like a threat.

She sprang out of her tent.

More and more people spilled out of their own, some cutting them open in their haste to exit, to see what was happening.

Zimrazagar looked up the source of the noise—

And laughed.

Above them, rushing towards them like a mighty wave, was wall of stone and earth.

She laughed, because what was she supposed to do with that? How were you supposed to respond to a wall of rock making its way right toward you? She’d never trained for this! And the absurdity of training for what to do in case of a cliff attacking you was hilarious.

She drew her sword, the hilt glittering and fey and bright as the starlight in her eyes. If she was going to die, she was going to die armed. If she was going to be killed by a wall of rock, she was bloody well going to fight it, like one of those doomed elven kings of old Miriel looked up to. It was pointless and stupid and counterproductive, but what options did she have? She shouted “Forward!” and charged the wall of rock.

Her sword punched through a layer of dirt, as the wave of it crested over her. She hit bedrock, and the sword bent in her hand, bent and then shattered against the force. The sword twisted out of her hand. She cried out in pain, but only for a moment, before the wave of rock fell on her head and chest, and she was no more.

* * *

Fire burst from the Meneltarma ahead of her, bright and firey and like a shower of sparks. The mountain rumbled underneath her feet, and she quaked in fear.

She drew in a deep breath (and immediately regretted it, the air of the Meneltarma burning her lungs and throat.) She had to do this. She would reach the top and do the prayer, even if the summit burned her to ash.

Something roared behind her. She turned to look at it over her shoulder.

She could not tell if the sea was rising, or Númenor was falling, but a wave washed over the land. Flat, not cresting, and moving fast, swallowing houses and streets like a basin being filled.

Miriel turned and ran, half desire to see her task done, and half animal instinct to get to higher ground.

The ground lurched under her feet, dropping four feet in one second. She fell to her knees, and scrambled up. She had to get to the top. S

he bit back her cry—the walk to the summit was to be silent, and she would succeed at this one thing.

She ran.

The ground dropper faster that her stride. The wave rose faster.

Water lapped at her feet, and quickly rose to her ankles, her knees, nearly pitching her forward. She broke her silence, against her will, crying out “Please!” The waters rose faster, and she fought to stay upright. “Eru, please!” She screamed.

The waters rose to her waist, and knocked her over into them.

The water was ice cold and murky and dragging her down—

Miriel did not drown.

The wave rushed, and crashed into a cliff of the Meneltarma, carrying her into it, and crushing her like a porcelain doll.

* * *

_“Ar-Pharazon the King and the mortal warriors who set foot upon the land of Aman were buried under falling hills: there it is said that they lie imprisoned in the Caves of the Forgotten, until the Last  
Battle and the Day of Doom._

_.._

_And last of all the mounting wave, green and cold and plumed with foam, climbing over the land, took to its bosom Tar-Miriel the Quuen, fairer than silver or ivory or pearls. Too late she strove to ascend the steep ways of the Meneltarma to the holy place; for the waters overtook her, and her cry was lost to the roaring of the wind.”_

_And thus ends to tale of Akallabeth the Downfallen.”_


End file.
